Lumpiness of production factors within a country might overturn the Heckscher–Ohlin (HO) model's predictions for the factor content of trade. Trade patterns, as predicted by this model, can both be magnified or reversed by uneven concentration of production factors within a country. Cities are...

In the famous debate between Keynes and Ohlin on the transfer problem, the interaction between non-traded goods and unemployment complicates the analysis considerably. We analyze these issues using four different models to conclude that Keynes’s concern regarding the large burden imposed on...

A key issue in development economics is the explanation of core-periphery patterns around the world. Combining this issue with that of analyzing unilateral transfers (e.g. foreign aid) points in the direction of the use of New Economic Geography (NEG) models which, so far, has not been done...

In explaining the uneven spatial distribution of economic activity, urban economics and new economic geography (NEG) dominate recent research in economics. A main difference between these two approaches is that NEG stresses the role of spatial linkages whereas urban economics does not do so. We...

The main purpose of this Handbook is to provide overviews and assessments of the state-of-the-art regarding research methods, approaches and applications central to economic geography. The chapters are written by distinguished researchers from a variety of scholarly traditions and with a...

Economic activity tends to cluster. This results in productivity gains. For policy makers this offers an opportunity to formulate and promote policies that foster clustering of economic activity. Paradoxically, although agglomeration rents are often found in empirical research a rationale for...

The literature on China indicates that the concentration of economic activities in China is less than in other industrialized countries. Institutional limits are largely held responsible for this finding (e.g. the Hukou system); firms and workers are not able to take full advantage of the...

Empirically, Trefler (1995) shows that actual trade flows deviate from predictions based on factor abundance theory in a systematic way (which he calls the ‘case of the missing trade’). Theoretically, Courant and Deardorff (1992) show that an uneven distribution of factors of...