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Abstract. This article presents an overview of the recent development in the new economic geography (NEG), and discusses possible directions of its future development. Since several surveys on this topic already exist, we focus on the selected features of NEG which are important yet have attracted insufficient attention, and also on the recent refinements and extensions of the framework.JEL Classification: R11, R12, R13, R14, F12, F23

The spatial intensities of both industries and population are highly uneven across space. Moreover, these intensities differ not only across industries, but also change through time. Nevertheless, we show using Japanese data for metropolitan areas in two time periods that the location intensities of both industries and population are linked by surprisingly simple and persistent patterns. In particular, we identify a strong negative log-linear relation between the number and the average (population) size of metro areas in which a given industry is found. This relation, which we designate as the Number-Average Size (NAS) Rule, is also shown to be intimately connected to both the Rank-Size Rule and Christaller's (1966) Hierarchy Principle applied to metropolitan areas. In particular, we show mathematically that in the presence of the Hierarchy Principle (which holds quite well in Japan) this NAS Rule is essentially equivalent to the Rank Size Rule.

In this paper, we propose a statistical index of industrial localization based on Kullback-Leibler divergence. This index is particularly well suited to cases where industrial data is only available at the regional level. Unlike existing regional-level indices, our index can be employed to test the significance of industrial localization relative to a hypothesized reference distribution of probable locations across regions. In addition, one can test relative degrees of localization among industries. Finally, as with all Kullback-Leibler divergence indices, our index can be decomposed into components representing localization at various levels of spatial aggregation.

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