Geography and development

Abstract

The most striking fact about the economic geography of underdevelopment at the international, national, and the world is the uneven spatial distribution of economic subcontinental levels. activity, including the coexistence of economic They review the theoretical and empirical work that development and underdevelopment. High-income illuminates how the spatial relationship between regions are almost entirely concentrated in a few economic units changes and conclude that geography temperate zones, half of the world's GDP is produced by matters for development, but that economic growth is 15 percent of the world's population, and 54 percent of not governed by a geographic determinism. New the world's GDP is produced by countries occupying just economic centers can develop, and the costs of 10 percent of the world's land area. The poorest half of remoteness can be reduced. the world's population produces only 14 percent of the Many explicit policy instruments have been used to world's GDP, and 17 of the poorest 20 nations are in influence location decisions. But none has been tropical Africa. The unevenness is also manifest within systematically successful, and many have been very countries and within metropolitan concentrations of costly-in part because they were based on inappropriate activity.expectations. Moreover, many ostensibly nonspatial Why are these spatial differences in land rents and policies that benefit specific sectors and households have wages not bid away by firms and individuals in search of spatial consequences since the targeted sectors and low-cost or high-income locations? Why does economic households are not distributed uniformly across space. activity cluster in centers of activity? And what are the These nonspatial policies can sometimes dominate consequences of remoteness from existing centers? explicitly spatial policies. Further work is needed to Henderson, Shalizi, and Venables argue that better understand these dynamics in developing understanding these issues is central for understanding countries. many aspects of economic development and This paper-a product of Infrastructure and Environment, Development Research Group-is part of a larger effort in the group to analyze the role of economic geography and urbanization in the development process. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank,

Economic Geography and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Above all, see also Henderson, Shalizi and Henderson (2001), our results are a reminder that distance or relative geography matters for economic development. Despite room for (policy-induced) improvements in market access, the (economic) remoteness of SubSaharan Africa remains a main deterrent to its economic development Notes : ** (*) denotes NOT significant at the 5% (1%) respectively.…”

Born to be green: new insights into the economics and management of green entrepreneurship

“…While a large body of literature examines the geographical dimension of entrepreneurship by considering the role of knowledge spillovers for entrepreneurship (Audretsch and Lehman 2005;Acs et al 2009 among others), the spatial determinants of entrepreneurship (Armington and Acs 2002;Tamvada 2015), factors shaping firm clustering (Henderson et al 2001;Fujita and Thisse 2013), and the impact of entrepreneurship on the region (Audretsch 2007, Erken et al 2016, Massón-Guerra and Ortín-Ángel 2017, little is known about the link between green entrepreneurship and the region.…”

Does medieval trade still matter? Historical trade centers, agglomeration and contemporary economic development

“…Using concepts developed by NEG (Krugman 1991) and agglomeration economics, one can explain why medieval trade was important for the rise of cities in medieval Europe. This is achieved by linking the characteristics of medieval trade and trade cities to second nature causes of agglomeration (for an overview over these see, e.g., Christ 2009, Glaeser et al 1992, Henderson et al 2001. In medieval times, the economy, especially the urban economy was characterized by a high degree of regional specialization (Ammann 1955, King 1985, Lopez 1952, Nicholas 1997, Postan 1952, Pounds 2005and van Werveke 1963.…”