The literature on economic geography has given us many deep insights into the spatial location of economic activity, the forces behind agglomeration, and their implications. For example, Paul Collier’s paper at this conference points out the difficulties that Africa will have in gaining a foothold in labor-intensive manufactured articles (such as textiles) now that South Asia has established a ...

ITH the future of the Doha Round uncertain, there has been a sharp increase in the number of bilateral and regional trade agreements. This has revived long-running arguments in international economics between those promoting global trade agreements and those favoring regional approaches. But in many ways this has been the wrong debate, especially for the world’s smallest, poorest, and most geog...

Editorial: Constructing an evolutionary economic geography 1. Taking evolution seriously in economic geography Change is one of capitalism's constants. As a mode of economic organization, capitalism never stands still. Its central imperative—the search for profit and wealth creation— drives a perpetual process of economic flux. Every day new firms, new products, new technologies, new industries...

The concept of embeddedness has gained much prominence in economic geography over the last decade, as much work has been done on the social and organisational foundations of economic activities and regional development. Unlike the original conceptualisations, however, embeddedness is mostly conceived of as a 'spatial' concept related to the local and regional levels of analysis. By re-visiting ...

a r t i c l e i n f o Paul Krugman has clarified the microeconomic underpinnings of both spatial economic agglomerations and regional imbalances at national and international levels. He has achieved this with a series of remarkably original papers and books that succeed in combining imperfect competition, increasing returns, and transportation costs in new and powerful ways. Yet, not everything...