Industrial Economics: advances in economic geography

Jacques Thisse, CORE, Université catholique de Louvain

Where: CORE, 34 Voie du Roman Pays, Louvain la Neuve

When: 10, 17, 24 February; 2, 9, 16, 23 and 30 March 2004 from 10:45 to 12:45 a.m.

Program and reading list

General references

-Baldwin R., R. Forslid , Ph. Martin, G. Ottaviano and F. Robert-Nicoud (2003) Economic Geography and Public Policy, Princeton (NJ), Princeton University Press.

-Fujita, M., P. Krugman and A.J. Venables (1999) The Spatial Economy. Cities, Regions and International Trade, Cambridge (MA), The MIT Press.

-Fujita, M and J.-F. Thisse (2002) Economics of Agglomeration. Cities, Industrial Location and Regional Growth, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002. Chapter 1.

-Krugman, P. (1991) Geography and Trade, Cambridge (MA), The MIT Press.

-Ottaviano, G. and J.-F. Thisse (2004) Agglomeration and economic geography, in J.V. Henderson and J.-F. Thisse, eds., Handbook of Regional ad Urban Economics. Volume IV, Amsterdam, North-Holland.

1.  Do we observe economic agglomerations and why?

-Combes and H. Overman (2004) Spatial distribution of economic activities in the European Union, in J.V. Henderson and J.-F. Thisse, eds., Handbook of Regional ad Urban Economics. Volume IV, Amsterdam, North-Holland.

-Fujita and Thisse (2002), Chapter 1.

-Hohenberg (2004) Historical geography of Europe, in J.V. Henderson and J.-F. Thisse, eds., Handbook of Regional ad Urban Economics. Volume IV, Amsterdam, North-Holland.

-Holmes and J. Stevens (2004) Spatial distribution of economic activities in North America, in J.V. Henderson and J.-F. Thisse, eds., Handbook of Regional ad Urban Economics. Volume IV, Amsterdam, North-Holland.

2.  The market structure problem in geographical economics and the Spatial Impossibility Theorem

-Fujita and Thisse (2002), Chapter 2.

-Gabszewicz and Thisse (1986) Spatial competition and the location of firms, in: J.J. Gabszewicz, J.-F. Thisse, M. Fujita and U. Schweizer, Location Theory, Chur, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1-71.

-Koopmans and Beckmann (1957) Assignment problems and the location of economic activities, Econometrica 25, 1401-1414.

-Ottaviano and Thisse (2004a) What about the ‘N’ in the so-called New Economic Geography? CORE, memo.

-Starrett (1978) Market allocations of location choice in a model with free mobility, Journal of Economic Theory 17, 21-37.

3. The home market effect

-Baldwin et al. (2003), Chapter 3.

-Head and Mayer (2004) The empirics of agglomeration and trade, in J.V. Henderson and J.-F. Thisse, eds., Handbook of Regional ad Urban Economics. Volume IV, Amsterdam, North-Holland.

-Helpman and Krugman (1985) Market Structure and Foreign Trade, Cambridge (MA), The MIT Press. Chapter 10.

-Krugman (1980) Scale economies, product differentiation, and the pattern of trade, American Economic Review 70, 950-959.

-Ottaviano and Thisse (2004).

4. The core-periphery structure

-Charlot, Gaigné, Robert-Nicoud and Thisse (2003) Agglomeration and welfare: the core-periphery model in the light of Bentham, Kaldor, and Rawls, CORE Discussion Paper N°39.

-Fujita et al. (1999), Chapters 4 and 5.

-Fujita and Thisse (2002), Chapter 9.

-Head and Mayer (2004) The empirics of agglomeration and trade, in J.V. Henderson and J.-F. Thisse, eds., Handbook of Regional ad Urban Economics. Volume IV, Amsterdam, North-Holland.

-Krugman (1991) Increasing returns and economic geography, Journal of Political Economy 99, 483-499.

-Neary (2001) Of hype and hyperbolas: introducing the new economic geography, Journal of Economic Literature 39, 536-561.

-Ottaviano, Tabuchi and Thisse (2002) Agglomeration and trade revisited, International Economic Review 43, 409-436.

-Ottaviano and Thisse (2004).

5. Probabilistic migrations

-Anderson, de Palma and Thisse (1992) Discrete Choice Theory of Product Differentiation, Cambridge (MA), The MIT Press. Chapters 2 and 5.

-Ginsburgh, Papageorgiou and Thisse (1985) On existence and stability of spatial equilibria and steady-states, Regional Science and Urban Economics 15, 149-158.

-Murata (2003) Product diversity, taste heterogeneity, and geographic distribution of economic activities: market vs. non-market interactions, Journal of Urban Economics 53, 126-144.

-Tabuchi and Thisse (2002) Taste heterogeneity, labor mobility and economic geography, Journal of Development Economics 69, 155-177.

6. Agglomeration and Trade

-Ades and Glaeser (1995) Trade and circuses: explaining urban giants, Quarterly Journal of Economics 110, 195-227.

-Behrens, Gaigné, Ottaviano and Thisse (2003) Interregional and international trade: Seventy years after Ohlin, CEPR Discussion Paper.

-Krugman and Livas Elizondo (1996) Trade policy and the third world metropolis, Journal of Development Economics 49, 137-150.

7.  Urban costs

-Helpman (1998) The size of regions, in: D. Pines, E. Sadka and I. Zilcha, eds., Topics in Public Economics. Theoretical and applied analysis, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 33-54.

-Ottaviano et al. (2002).

-Tabuchi (1998) Agglomeration and dispersion: a synthesis of Alonso and Krugman, Journal of Urban Economics 44, 333-351.

-Tabuchi and Thisse (2003) Regional specialization, urban hierarchy, and commuting costs, CORE Discussion Paper N°60.