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Modeling Agglomeration and Dispersion in City and Country: Gunnar Myrdal, François Perroux, and the New Economic Geography

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  • Stephen J. Meardon
Abstract
The “new economic geography” is a recent body of literature that seeks to explain how resources and production come to be concentrated spatially for reasons other than the standard “geographic” ones. Unlike alternative explanations of the geographic distribution of industry, the literature is not interdisciplinary. The new economic geography lies well within economics proper: it is an offspring of international trade theory, with models characterized by increasing returns, factor mobility, and transportation costs. The models explain the distribution of industry in terms of the opposition of an agglomerating force, the interaction of transportation costs and increasing returns to scale, with a dispersing force, commonly the interaction of transportation costs and a partially fixed input or output market. Some authors outside the new economic geography (e.g., Martin 1999) have criticized it as simplistic, irrelevant, or passé. They claim it employs overly abstract analysis, prioritizes mathematical technique over realistic explanation, and is reminiscent of the much earlier works of Gunnar Myrdal and François Perroux—in comparison to which, however, it falls short. This paper investigates the similarities and differences between the new economic geography and the work of Myrdal and Perroux, who in the previous special issue of this journal were ranked by Zafirovsky (1999, pp. 596, 598) as among the leading twentieth century economic sociologists. I examine how the techniques of analysis and intuitive explanations of agglomeration compare between these economic sociologists and the new economic geographers. The paper highlights what has been gained and what has been lost by the new economic geographers, who generally eschew interdisciplinary study.

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  • Stephen J. Meardon, 2001. "Modeling Agglomeration and Dispersion in City and Country: Gunnar Myrdal, François Perroux, and the New Economic Geography," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 25-57, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ajecsc:v:60:y:2001:i:1:p:25-57
    DOI: 10.1111/1536-7150.00053
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    Cited by:

    1. Ron A. Boschma & Koen Frenken, 2006. "Why is economic geography not an evolutionary science? Towards an evolutionary economic geography," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(3), pages 273-302, June.
    2. Song, Weize & Yang, Wenqing & Wang, Na & Wang, Can & Li, Zheng & Ou, Yifu & Zhang, Xiaoling, 2024. "How does industrial transformative process shape the spatial dynamics of urban development?," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    3. Ho Yeon KIM & Petra de Jong & Jan Rouwendal & Aleid Brouwer, 2012. "Shrinking population and the urban hierarchy [Housing preferences and attribute importance among Dutch older adults: a conjoint choice experiment]," ERSA conference papers ersa12p350, European Regional Science Association.
    4. Teirlinck, Peter & Khoshnevis, Pegah, 2020. "Within-cluster determinants of output efficiency of R&D in the space industry," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    5. Kim, Ho Yeon, 2012. "Shrinking population and the urban hierarchy," IDE Discussion Papers 360, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    6. Lu, Lan & Yin, Shuiying & Wen, Fuying & Xu, Qingqing, 2023. "The spatial structure of labour force employment in China’s industries: Measurement and extraction," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 472-486.
    7. Honorata Howaniec & Marcin Lis, 2020. "Euroregions and Local and Regional Development—Local Perceptions of Cross-Border Cooperation and Euroregions Based on the Euroregion Beskydy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-21, September.
    8. Kollai, István, 2019. "Elszegényítő központi régiók? A területi egyenlőtlenség lehetséges mozgatórugói Szlovákiában [Core regions impoverished? Spread and backwash effects on territorial inequality in 21st-century Centra," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(11), pages 1125-1144.

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