Public infrastructure policies and economic geography

The Economic Geography of the Internet’s Infrastructure*

The Internet is perhaps the defining technology of the emerging twenty-first century. This article examines the infrastructure that comprises the “network of networks” and the spatial patterns that have emerged in the Internet’s short existence. In its brief history, the Internet has manifested a tentative relationship with the urban hierarchy. This relationship is tracked over a four-year peri...

Taxation, Infrastructure, and Endogenous Trade Costs in New Economic Geography

This paper presents a New Economic Geography model with distortionary taxation and endogenized trade costs. Tax revenues finance a public good, infrastructure. We show that the introduction of costly public investment in infrastructure increases agglomerative tendencies. With respect to the regions’ sizes, in the periphery, the price-index for manufacturing goods decreases, whereas for the core...

Economic geography

Geography and Economic Development

Location and climate have large effects on income levels and income growth through their effects on transport costs, disease burdens, and agricultural productivity, among other channels. Geography also seems to affect economic policy choices. Many geographic regions that have not been conducive to modern economic growth have high population densities and are experiencing rapid increases in popu...

Geography and Economic Growth

This paper addresses the complex relationship between geography and macroeconomic growth. It investigates the ways in which geography may matter directly for growth, controlling for economic policies and institutions, as well as the effects of geography on policy choices and institutions. It finds that location and climate have large effects on income levels and income growth through their effe...