The impact of transportation networks on the location of human activities is a surprisingly neglected topic in economic geography. Using the simple plant location problem, this paper investigates such an impact in the case of a few idealized networks. It is seen that a grid network tends to...

We present a selective survey of the main results obtained in spatial economic theory. Our focus is on firm location. We start with the simplest location problem and proceed to recent models of industrial location in general equilibrium. The middle section is a review of what has been...

We study how political boundaries and tax competition among jurisdictions interact with the labor and land markets to determine the economic structure and performance of metropolitan areas. Contrary to general belief, institutional fragmentation and cross-border commuting need not be...

New economic geography focuses on the impact of falling transport costs on the spatial distribution of activities. However, it disregards the role of technological innovations, which are central to modern economic growth, as well as the role of migration costs, which are a strong impediment to...

Many trade models of monopolistic competition identify cost efficiency as the main determinant of firm performance in export markets. To date, the analysis of demand factors has received much less attention. We propose a new model where consumer preferences are asymmetric across varieties and...

The objective of this paper is to apply different welfare approaches to the canonical model developed by Krugman, with the aim of comparing the only two possible market outcomes, i.e. agglomeration and dispersion. More precisely, we use the Pareto criterion, the compensation criteria put forward...