Clark University | Economic Geography Journal

Trade and Regional Inequality by Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

Abstract:

This article examines the relationship between openness and within-country regional inequality across 28 countries over the period 1975–2005. In particular, it tests whether increases in trade lead to rising inequalities, whether these inequalities recede in time, and whether increases in global trade affect the developed and developing worlds differently. Using static and dynamic panel data analysis, I found that while increases in trade per se do not lead to greater territorial polarization, in combination with certain country-specific conditions, trade has a positive and significant association with regional inequality. States with higher interregional differences in sectoral endowments, a lower share of governmental expenditures, and a combination of high internal transaction costs with a higher degree of coincidence between the regional income distribution and regional foreign market access positions have experienced the greatest rise in territorial inequality when exposed to greater trade flows. Hence, changes in trade regimes have a more polarizing and enduring effect in low- and middle-income countries whose structural features tend to enhance the trade-inequality effect and whose levels of internal spatial inequality are, on average, significantly higher than in high-income countries.

Key words: trade;regional inequality;developing and developed countries;low- and middle-income countries

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Trade Costs and Economic Development, by Michele Fratianni, Francesco Marchionne

Abstract: In our study, we tested the hypothesis of the bidirectional causality between trade costs and economic development using data on Italian provinces. Using different methods to control for multilateral resistance, we applied a gravity equation to estimate sectoral exports to 188 countries over the period 1995–2004. Provincial trade costs were constructed as the sum of five province-specific elasticities, including distance, adjacency, and common money. We found that Italian provinces are heterogeneous with respect to trade costs. These costs are influenced by lagged provincial per capita income and industrial structure. In turn, trade costs influence future provincial per capita income. This bidirectional relationship between trade costs and income is broadly consistent with the two-way causation process emphasized by the New Geographical Economics.

Key words: trade costs;heterogeneity;uneven development;gravity equation

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Inventive Megaregions of the United States: Technological Composition and Location by Breandán Ó hUallacháin

Abstract: Urban distinctiveness occurs in both technological and geographic space. This article explores spatial associations in the locational distribution of subcategories of patents across U.S. metropolitan areas. I converted patent counts to location quotients and used nonspatial methods to compare concentration levels of patents (Gini coefficients) and to identify groups of patents that tend to colocate (principal components analysis). The results show considerable variation in concentration levels and that nine groupings, entitled “technology components,” account for almost 68 percent of the variance in the distribution of the subcategories. Spatial analysis permits the exploration of spatial dependencies in each “technology component.” The results identify distinctive inventive regions that are termed inventive megaregions.

Key words: invention;concentration;colocation;spatial dependence;megaregions;patents;locational associations

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Neoliberalization and Its Geographic Limits: Comparative Reflections from Forest Peripheries in the Global North by Roger Hayter, Trevor J. Barnes

Abstract:Recently, a number of economic geography studies have emphasized that when neoliberalism is grounded in particular places, it takes on hybrid forms, a result of local contingencies that are found at those sites. This article contributes to this literature by explicating the processes by which hybridization occurs by drawing on a comparative study of neoliberalism in three contemporary forest-based regions in the Global North: British Columbia, Canada; Tasmania, Australia; and the North Island, New Zealand. A key term for us is geographic limits, by which we mean regionally specific constellations (assemblages) of institutional and material forms that resist; hybridize; or, at junctures, even offset neoliberalism with alternative agendas. In turn, our idea of geographic limits is derived from our larger conceptual framework that integrates Anna Tsing's (2005) concept of friction with the notion of remapping and a four-leg stakeholder model that consists of different, albeit overlapping, institutional agencies that represent the political, the industrial, the environmental, and the cultural. These institutions provide the animus for a remapping that variously implements, modifies, and occasionally counters neoliberalism.

Key words: neoliberalism;geographic limits;friction remapping;stakeholder model;forest economy

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