This paper is an effort to do international trade theory without mentioning countries. Nearly all models of the international economy assume that trade takes place between nations or regions which are themselves dimensionless points. We develop a model in which economic space is instead assumed...

A monopolistically competitive manufacturing sector produces goods used for final consumption and as intermediates. Intermediate usage creates cost and demand linkages between firms and a tendency for manufacturing agglomeration. How does globalization affect the location of manufacturing and...

In the United States, many industries have a Silicon Valley-type geographic localization. In Europe, these same industries often have four or more major centers of production. This difference is presumably the result of the formal and informal trade barriers that have divided the European...

May 2000 - Multinationals have become increasingly important to the world economy. Overseas production by U.S. affiliates is three times U.S. exports, for example. Who is investing where, for sales where? Much foreign direct investment is between high-income countries, but investment in some...

December 1999 - Developing countries may be better served by north-south than by south-south free trade agreements. Free trade agreements between low-income countries tend to lead to divergence in member country incomes, while agreements between high-income countries tend to lead to convergence....

December 1999 - The median landlocked country has only 30 percent of the trade volume of the median coastal economy. Halving transport costs increases that trade volume by a factor of five. Improving the standard of infrastructure from that of the bottom quarter of countries to that of the...

What effect does distance have on costs for economies at different locations? Exports and imports of final and intermediate goods bear transport costs that increase with distance. Production and trade depend on factor endowments and factor intensities as well as on distance and the transport...

Many cities in developing economies, particularly in Africa, are experiencing urbanization without industrialization. This paper conceptualizes this in a framework in which a city can produce non-tradable goods and-if it is sufficiently competitive-also internationally tradable goods,...