Economic Geography

Economic geographers study and attempt to explain the spatial configuration of economic activities, including the production of goods and services, their transfer from one economic agent to another and their transformation into utility by consumers. The spatial configuration, which includes both the pattern of activities on the map and the relationships between activities occurring in different places, is the outcome of a vast number of distinct but interrelated decisions made by firms, households, governments and a variety of other private and public institutions. The goal of this book is to provide the student with a rigorous introduction to a diverse but logically consistent set of analytical models of the spatial decisions and interactions that drive the evolution of the economic landscape.

The book begins by explaining fundamental concepts that are critical to all topics in economic geography: the friction of distance, agglomeration, spatial interaction, market mechanisms, natural resources and production technologies. The following sections cover major areas of inquiry including multiregional economies, location theory, markets for space and systems of cities. The final section synthesizes and builds on these topics to address two trends that provide particular challenges to economic geographers today: globalization and the emergence of the knowledge economy.

William P. Anderson is Ontario Research Chair in Cross-Border Transportation Policy, University of Windsor, Canada.

Preface Acknowledgements Part 1 Fundamental Concepts 1. Introduction 2. The Friction of Distance 3. Agglomeration 4. Markets 5. Spatial Interaction 6. Resources and the Environment 7. The Production Technology Part II: The Multiregional Economy 8. Specialization and Trade 9. Interregional Movements of Labor and Capital 10. Polarization in the Multiregional Economy 11. Scale economies and imperfect competition in the multiregional economy 12. Unemployment and Regional Policy Part III: Location Theory 13. Transportation and Location 14. Scale Economies and Input Substitution 15. Labor, Rent, Taxes and Subsidies 16. Interrelated Location Choices Part IV: Markets for Space 17. Agricultural Land Use 18 Urban Land Use: The Monocentric City 19. Urban Sprawl and the Polycentric City Part V: Systems of Cities 20. Urbanization 21 City Size Distribution and Urban Hierarchies 22. Central Place Theory 23. Network Urban Systems Part VI: Globalization and the Knowledge Economy 25. The Globalization of Production Systems 24. International Trade and Foreign Direct Investment 26. The Knowledge Economy