The Geography of Development

Klaus Desmet, Esteban Rossi-Hansberg and David Nagy ()

No 10544, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We study the relationship between geography and growth. To do so, we first develop a dynamic spatial growth theory with realistic geography. We characterize the model and its balanced-growth path and propose a methodology to analyze equilibria with different levels of migration frictions. Different migration scenarios change local market size and therefore innovation incentives and the evolution of technology. We bring the model to the data for the whole world economy at a 1º x 1º geographic resolution. We then use the model to quantify the gains from relaxing migration restrictions as well as to describe the evolution of the distribution of economic activity under different migration scenarios. Our results indicate that fully liberalizing migration would increase welfare about three-fold and would significantly affect the evolution of particular regions of the world.

Keywords: Development; Gains from mobility; Geography; Growth; Migration; Spatial economics; Trade; World economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F22 O1 O15 O18 R11 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-int and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP10544 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: The Geography of Development (2018)
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:cpr:ceprdp:10544

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP10544

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().