Both unemployment and non-employment in Great Britain fell steadily after 1993. The ratio of jobs to the working age population - the employment rate - rose. But the increasing regional dispersion of employment rates remains a puzzle. By 2000-01, this dispersion was close to its 1974 and 1985...

The observed uneven distribution of economic activity across space is influenced by variation in exogenous geographical characteristics and endogenous interactions between agents in goods and factor markets. Until the past decade, the theoretical literature on economic geography had focused on...