This paper - a piece of the research output of the EU-funded project TERA - investigates the dynamics of development in the area of Basso Ferrarese, in Italy. The area is a relatively underdeveloped zone located in the otherwise wealthy Emilia Romagna. The first part of the paper identifies some...

This paper examines the degree of correlation of EU regional employment cycles and attempts to show whether these cycles reflect changing patterns of specialisation. By focusing on the regional level and by employing three different indicators of similarity of sectoral structure, it improves on...

This paper uses a combination of Ethier (1982) and Melitz’s (2003) models to show that liberalizing trade among developing countries, so-called South-South trade, could contribute to improve the access to international markets of developing countries’ would-be exporters. Lower trade barriers...

With free trade areas (FTAs) under negotiation between Japan and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) members and between the Republic of Korea and AFTA members, preferential market access will become more important in Asian regionalism. Protectionist pressures will likely increase through rules of...

We analyze industrial specialization and geographic concentration patterns within the NAFTA area during 1988-2000 and examine the determinant of spatial concentration. NAFTA countries have become increasingly dissimilar over time. A changing spatial structure of total NAFTA manufacturing is also...

This paper presents a two-country two-industry monetary model, with intermediate inputs and transport costs, which builds a bridge between the New Open Economy Macroeconomics and the New Economic Geography literatures. Endogenously asymmetric shocks arise in this model when the exchange rate...

In this paper, I reexamine the empirical relationship between trade openness and urban concentration. Using a panel data set of more than 110 countries for the period from 1970 through 2000, I find that previous results of a negative association between trade openness and the size of a country's...

Where economic activity will locate in the future is one of the most important questions in economics. Even though advances in technology have reduced the cost of transport, communication and information gathering and processing, hence curtailing the ‘distance penalty’, local proximity...

This paper provides a new model of firm’s location choices. It integrates a Ricardian model of comparative advantage with the location effects deriving from trade costs, increasing returns to scale, product dif ferentiation, and monopolistic competition. In a two-region,...

Traditional push-and-pull factors offered partial explanations to the size of large urban areas in the third world. Moreover, the growing literature in eco - nomic geography identifies an additional factor exacerbating the phenomenon, namely trade costs. The present study tests econometrically...