The Role of Geography in Development

Paul Krugman
Additional contact information
Paul Krugman: Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, krugman@mit.edu

International Regional Science Review, 1999, vol. 22, issue 2, 142-161

Abstract: This article assesses how the tension between centripetal forces (such as forward and backward linkages in production and increasing returns in transportation) and centrifugal forces (such as factor immobility and land rents) can produce a process of self-organization in which symmetric locations end up playing very different economic roles. The article discusses geographic models of the division of the world into industrial and developing countries, of the emergence of regional inequality within developing countries, and of the emergence of giant urban centers. It argues that the conflict between “predestination†and “self-organizing†approaches to economic geography may be more apparent than real and briefly discusses policy—mainly in terms of why it is so hard to draw policy conclusions from economic geography models.

Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/016001799761012307 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:inrsre:v:22:y:1999:i:2:p:142-161

DOI: 10.1177/016001799761012307

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Regional Science Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().