Consider a model à la Koopmans-Beckmann involving two indivisible and interactive firms, as well as a continuum of workers. Firm 1 uses labor, while firm 2 uses labor and good 1 produced by firm 1; both goods 1 and 2 can be exported their output but good 1 cannot be imported. The land...

The most salient feature of the spatial economy is the presence of a large variety of economic agglomerations. Our purpose is to review some of the main explanations of this universal phenomenon, as they are proposed in urban economics and modern economic geography. We first show why the...

A new approach is proposed to explain the formation of secondary employment centers in a monocentric city. Specifically, a large firm considers locating a new plant in a city where none of the existing businesses has a significative share of the labor force, so that its location can be viewed as...

In this paper, I explain Thünens pioneering work on industrial agglomeration. In my opinion, Thünens thinking on industrial agglomeration was not only amazingly advanced for his time, but in many respects remains novel even today. It is shown that if we unify Thünens well-known theory on...

Is the paradise of effortless communication the ideal environment for knowledge creation? Or, can the development of local culture in regions raise knowledge productivity compared to a single region with a unitary culture? In other words, can a real technological increase in the cost of...