This paper focuses on two issues that challenge the accepted pessimistic view that regional trade agreements (RTAs) between developing countries in welfare terms by taking into account scale economies in transport. First, how is the standard welfare analysis of an RTA affected by the endogeneity...

This chapter examines empirical strategies that have been or could be used to evaluate the importance of agglomeration and trade models. This theoretical approach, widely known as New Economic Geography (NEG), emphasizes the interaction between transport costs and firm-level scale economies as a...

In the presence of scale economies, industries are incentivized to localize production. Geography is key in determining where that localization happens. The Home Market Effect (HME) predicts that locations with the largest demand are the host. Yet, since its origin by Krugman (1980), the...