Economic Geography - General

• The Geography of Indiana Technology-Based Economic Development - Technologies affect all aspects of the State's economy, including manufacturing, life sciences and health care, and agriculture. In the main, science and technology creation occurs in research universities, of which Indiana has a significant number, although only three are major Carnegie Research Extensive institutions: Indiana University, Purdue University, and the University of Notre Dame, although other academic institutions have important science and technology strengths (Ball State University, Indiana State University, and IUPUI are Carnegie Research Intensive institutions); something which has begun to become evident in the distribution of 21st Century Fund awards. Also apparent is the predominance of 21st Century Fund awards to the three institutions above. This is not illogical. Heterogeneity among the educational institutions of the State is highly desirable, optimizing educational opportunities for a heterogeneous population. Indiana 21st Century Fund awards have evolved since 1999. The applicant community now clearly understands the distinction between the FundÕs focus and federal research and technology discovery programs. While major research institutions have dominated awards, more specialized proposals from other academic institutions and from companies located outside of the immediate vicinity of major research institutions are increasing in number and success.
• Economic Geography Research Group - Working Papers - The Economic Geography Research Group Working Paper Series features theoretically-informed and original research in economic geography. Completed manuscripts should be submitted as e-mail attachments or on disk to the series editor, Shaun French, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom (shaun.french@nottingham.ac.uk). Manuscripts should conform to the following guidelines: typed in WORD 6.0 or equivalent, c. 8,000 words, 1.5 or double spacing throughout, with name and contact details of author(s), paper title, short abstract with keywords, footnotes, and a separate list of references. Style should be consistent with previous Working Papers in the Series. Figures and tables can be included provided they are readable and can be sent as .pdf files. The EGRG has a non-exclusive publishing policy, but it is assumed that manuscripts submitted to the Working Paper Series have not already been published elsewhere.
• Complexity & Chaos in Economic Geography - A list of readings on the topic, including some websites.
• Complex landscapes of spatial interaction - How complex is the spatial economy? Some apostles of complexity argue that complex behaviour can arise in any system consisting of a largish number of intelligent, adaptive agents interacting on the basis of local information only. This paper examines several features of such dynamic systems, including path-dependence, emergence and self-organization. It goes on to explore their importance for the spatial sciences. Because space scales can change abruptly from local to global, strongly-interactive spatial economies sometimes exhibit astonishing collective properties, emergent features which are lawful in their own right. Segregation, self-similarity and the rank-size rule are familiar examples. To understand how collective order arises from seemingly random fluctuations, we must note how agents choose to interact with other agents and with their environment. We must synthesize rather than analyse. In the paper, self-organization is explored in a variety of contexts, including Schelling's model of neighborhood segregation and some work with cellular automata that has sharpened our insights into the collective synthesis of agents' interactions. Power laws are widely observed. A new way of doing social science - agent-based simulation - offers powerful new insights. It seems likely to revolutionize our field, along with the whole of the social sciences. Some of the current research underway in this area is discussed.
• The World Economy - This Page is available to assist students in research related to The World Economy.
• Economic Geography Research Group - This page features book reviews of interest to economic geographers. The aim is to cut the time lag between the publication of a book and the appearance of the review in academic journals. The reviews are available for downloading in PDF.
• Clark University -- Economic Geography - Current issue of the journal "Economic Geography": Contents and abstracts.
• American Demographics / PARALLEL UNIVERSE - For 15 years, geodemographic sleuth Michael Weiss has been sizing up Americans' generational proclivities, regional peculiarities, and other distinguishing features, often in the pages of this magazine. Why do more guys in Gainesville than Grand Rapids dye their hair? Where do the Brie eaters live? Weiss uses cluster analysis, which categorizes neighborhoods by their shared demographic, social, and economic characteristics, to solve such mysteries. In his last book, Latitudes and Attitudes, he profiled America's consumption habits - everyone from the wok wonks to the metal heads. In his new book, The Clustered World, due out from Little, Brown and Company at the end of the year and excerpted here for the first time, Weiss maps the new cartography of global consumption, and highlights the changes that have redefined the United States in the last decade.
• Where are the Web Factories? : information technology and the future of urban environments - The Internet has been considered the great equalizer for business, allowing distant locals to compete with large metropolitan regions. Recent research points to a different geography, where domains and connectivity cluster predominantly in large urban areas. The question remains are new businesses of the Internet economy doing the same or avoiding metropolitan areas. This paper will examine the head and branch locations of the top forty e-business integration firms in the U.S. The analysis of the distribution of these locations will provide insight to what regions most benefit from the Internet Economy. Further the data should provide a useful comparison to metropolitan trends for domain and connectivity agglomeration.
• Geography and Economic Development - This paper addresses the complex relationship between geography and macroeconomic growth. We investigate the ways in which geography may matter directly for growth, controlling for economic policies and institutions, as well as the effects of geography on policy choices and institutions. We find that location and climate have large effects on income levels and income growth, through their effects on transport costs, disease burdens, and agricultural productivity, among other channels. Furthermore, geography seems to be a factor in the choice of economic policy itself. When we identify geographical regions that are not conducive to modern economic growth, we find that many of these regions have high population density and rapid population increase. This is especially true of populations that are located far from the coast, and thus that face large transport costs for international trade, as well as populations in tropical regions of high disease burden. Furthermore, much of the population increase in the next thirty years is likely to take place in these geographically disadvantaged regions.
• Cluster emergence on a global continuum - This paper models spatial economic development, making explicit both time and space. Locations are not just points---which would leave unanswered the question, What happens in between?---but instead a continuum. Equilibrium is a law of motion in spatial distribution dynamics, or a transition kernel in measures on geographical space. The paper provides a model of economic geography without transportation costs; it is used to study the evolution across Earth of financial, Internet, telecommunications, and computer activity.
• European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) - Final and full text version of the document setting out guidelines for spatial development in the EU, agreed Potsdam 1999. These are quite large PDF files, containing full colour maps, etc. The report itself consists of analysis of spatial development in the EU area as well as some guidelines which form a cautious attempt at physical planning at a European scale.
• Canada and the Knowledge-Based Economy - The purpose of this paper is to provide a general introduction to the so-called "knowledge revolution" and the changes that it is expected to have on the Canadian economy. Beginning with a description of the changes under way in our economy, the paper moves to consider the challenges that it will pose for Canada.
• The Location Of Multinational Firms In The European Urban System - The progress of political and economic integration among European countries is inducing the progressive emergence of a European urban system. National urban systems are restructuring and adapting themselves to this new international and economic context. The location of the largest multinational firms is taken as revealing a major step in the process of the integration of European cities into supra-national networks. A survey of the location of 3000 establishments belonging to the 300 largest European firms provides interesting results about the factors making European cities attractive for such activities. It may be inferred from these results that they confirm a new trend called 'metropolisation', which is reinforcing the top of the national urban hierarchies, as demonstrated in other studies.
• Spatial perspectives on new theories of economic growth - A new wave of interest in long-run economic growth emerged since the late 1980s. This paper uses a simple model to illustrate how technological change can be endogenised in macroeconomic theories of growth and then surveys how - through factor mobility, the diffusion of innovations and trade - spatial interdependence in a system of regions can influence technological change and growth. Endogenous technological change generates in our illustrative model long-run steady-state growth in a closed economy. However, it turns out that the dynamic impact of spatial interdependence depends on the specification of the model. Spatial convergence, a steady state with persisting spatial differences in growth rates and unstable growth are all theoretically possible. Issues relating to the role of aggregate demand and policy also receive attention. There is much scope for further theoretical and empirical work on endogenous growth in a spatial-economic context, while a better integration of micro and macro level approaches is also desirable.
• What will the future be like? - In this area of bt.com, Ian Pearson presents his insights into the future of many aspects of our daily lives - from work to leisure, and from capitalism to the care economy.
• An Economic Geography of Information & Telecommunications: Outline & Resources
• Summer Conference on National Innovation Systems, Industrial Dynamics and Innovation Policy, Rebild, June 9-12, 1999 - Lots of downloadable papers in pdf format.
• Geography of Information - Notes, weblinks, and an extensive reading list.
• Knowledge Spillovers and Geography of Innovation: A Comparison of National Systems of Innovation - Several papers presented at this conference are available for download in pdf format.
• Increasing Returns and Economic Geography - Paul Krugman
• Economic Geography Resource Index - Topical collection of hundreds of annotated reading/resource lists by Günter Krumme, Washington University. Topics range from the very general (Afrika, services, transportation etc.) to the very detailed (car sharing programs, hotelling matrix, homelessness, homelessness, pizza franchise site selection, Werner Sombart, tobacco industry etc.) It will prove very useful for almost any geographer, especially those engaged in economic geography and business studies.
• Geography and Economic Development
• Eurobarometer - Reports on the European Union.
• Links on Future Development - Links to Futurology, Future Studies provide insights on the emerging global mind.
• New Economic Geography - Economists say they have rediscovered geography. Geographers are interested to hear it. They didn't know they had been away.
• Britannica - Economic Geography
• The State of World Population 1999 - 6 Billion: A Time for Choices
• World Development Report 1999/2000
• GEO-2000 : Global Environment Outlook : United Nations Environment Programme
• Economic Geography Hyperlinks
• Oxford University Economic Geography Working Papers
• Economic Geography Research Group
• Reel-to-Real Urban Geographies: Placing the Production of Representational Space in an Economic and Industrial Context
• Economy Culture and Space
• Towards a New Century: The State of the World
• Economic Geography
• National Security Council Memorandum (NSSM) 200 (Population) -
  • Chapter I: World Demographic Trends
  • Chapter II: Population and World Food Supplies
  • Chapter III: Minerals and Fuel
  • Chapter IV: Economic Development and Population Growth
  • Chapter V: Implications of Population Pressures for National Security
  • Chapter VI: World Population Conference
• Why Aren't Business Schools Teaching Business Geographics?
• Business Geographics
• Economic & Business Geography: Resources & Reading Lists
• What is Factasia? - Somewhat off-beat thinkpiece with lots of links
• The Environmental Crisis and NASA's Proposal
• Economic Geography of the Industrial World - a detailed course outline
• Economic Geography & GIS
• Spatial Theories and Deconstructionism in the History of Alternative Social and Economic Geography in Japan
• Business Environment: Megatrends
• Continuities And Changes In The Modern World Economy
• Reindustrialization of the Rustbelt - Compare with paper below.
• America's Changing Economic Landscape
• Economic Geography Research Group - The Economic Geography Research Group aims to foster research and its dissemination in economic geography by organising meetings, developing contact and cooperation among geographers and other social scientists, and promoting the publication of research. The web pages include details about the group, prizes, book reviews, working papers and links to other sites which may interest EGRG members, conferences organised by the group and EGRG Newsletters.
• New Economic Geography - The standard model of New Economic Geography (NEG) presents a synthesis of polarization and neo-classical theories. Within a monopolistic competition framework it aims to explain processes of concentration and deconcentration of manufacturing in a two-sector economy. In this paper the effects of several assumptions of spatial agglomeration processes are addressed. In particular, we investigate the effects of transport costs for agricultural goods, spatial spillovers, the presence of non-tradable services and limited mobility of the labour force. It becomes clear that the tendency towards deconcentration of manufacturing is more marked - the higher the transport costs for agricultural goods, - the stronger the positive spillovers across the regions, - the more income spent on services, - the more limited the mobility of the labour force. (A pdf download.)
• Economic geography - Economic geography is the study of the location, distribution and spatial organisation of economic activities across the Earth. It focuses on the location of industries and retail and wholesale businesses, on transportation and trade, and on the changing value of real estate. Courses in economic geography may cover such topics as transportation, agriculture, industrial location, world trade, and the spatial organisation and function of business activity.
  Geology can affect resource availability, geomorphology, the cost of transportation, and the quality of soiled land alter economic activities. Climate can influence natural resource availability (forestry products) and location or type of agriculture (see growing region). The social and political factors that are unique to a particular region also have an impact on economic decisions and further distributions of these activities.

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