The Economics of Isolation and Distance

This paper explores the economic implications of isolation and remoteness. Evidence on the impact of distance on trade costs and trade flows is reviewed, and the effects of remoteness on real incomes are investigated. Empirical work confirms the predictions of theory, that distance from markets and sources of supply can have a significant negative impact on per capita income. The possible implications of new technologies for these spatial inequalities are discussed.Economic isolation, market access, trade costs.

Yawning gaps.

Why has globalisation brought such large increases in exports to some countries and not to others? Stephen Redding and Anthony Venables look at the way internal geography and domestic institutions seem to be a large part of the answer.

Economic Geography and International Inequality

This paper estimates a structural model of economic geography using cross-country data on per capita income, bilateral trade, and the relative price of manufacturing goods. More than 70% of the variation in per capita income can be explained by the geography of access to markets and to sources of supply of intermediate inputs. These results are robust to the inclusion of other geographical, social, and institutional characteristics. The estimated coefficients are consistent with plausible values for the structural parameters of the model. We find quantitatively important effects of distance, access to the coast, and openness on levels of per capita income.Economic Development Economic Geography International Trade

Explaining Cross-Country Export Performance: International Linkages and Internal Geography

This paper investigates the determinants of countries' export performance looking in particular at the role of international product market linkages. We begin with a novel decomposition of the growth in countries' exports into the contribution from increases in external demand and from improved internal supply-side conditions. Building on the results of this decomposition, we move on to an econometric analysis of the determinants of export performance. Results include the finding that poor external geography, poor internal geography, and poor institutional quality contribute in approximately equal measure to explaining Sub-Saharan Africa's poor export performance.Economic Development, Economic Geography, International Trade

Geography and Export Performance: External Market Access and Internal Supply Capacity

This paper investigates the determinants of countries' export performance looking in particular at the role of international product market linkages. We begin with a novel decomposition of the growth in countries' exports into the contribution from increases in external demand and from improved internal supply-side conditions. Building on the results of this decomposition we move on to an econometric analysis of the determinants of export performance. Results include the finding that poor external geography, poor internal geography, and poor institutional quality contribute in approximately equal measure to explaining Sub-Saharan Africa's poor export performance.

Universal inversion formulas for recovering a function from spherical means

The problem of reconstruction a function from spherical means is at the heart of several modern imaging modalities and other applications. In this paper we derive universal back-projection type reconstruction formulas for recovering a function in arbitrary dimension from averages over spheres centered on the boundary an arbitrarily shaped smooth convex domain. Provided that the unknown function is supported inside that domain, the derived formulas recover the unknown function up to an explicitly computed smoothing integral operator. For elliptical domains the integral operator is shown to vanish and hence we establish exact inversion formulas for recovering a function from spherical means centered on the boundary of elliptical domains in arbitrary dimension.Comment: [20 pages, 2 figures] Compared to the previous versions I corrected some typo

The Economic Geography of Trade, Production, and Income: A Survey of Empirics

This paper surveys the empirical literature on the economic geography of trade flows, factor prices, and the location of production. The discussion is structured around the empirical predictions of a canonical theoretical model. We review empirical evidence on the determinants of trade costs and the effects of these costs on trade flows. Geography is a major determinant of factor prices, and access to foreign markets alone is shown to explain some 35% of the cross-country variation in per capita income. The paper documents empirical findings of home market (or magnification) effects, suggesting that imperfectly competitive industries are drawn more than proportionately to locations with good market access. Sub-national evidence establishes the presence of industrial clustering, and we examine the roles played by product market linkages to customer and supplier firms, knowledge spillovers, and labour market externalities.

The Relationship Between Training in Verbal Interaction Analysis and Selected Counseling Process Variables

Problem: The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between training in verbal interaction analysis and selected counseling process variables. The counseling process variables were counselor personality traits and the therapeutic conditions of empathic understanding, respect, and genuineness. Procedure: The subjects in the study consisted of thirty beginning counseling practicum students enrolled in the Department of Counseling and Guidance at the University of North Dakota. The group was divided into three experimental groups and three control groups. The experimental groups received fourteen hours of training in Flanders\u27 verbal interaction analysis as modified by Amidon. The control groups met for free discussion for an equal period of time. Pre-training initial interview tapes and post-training initial interview tapes were i^ated on the Cark- huff Interpersonal Process Scales of empathic understanding, communication of respect and facilitative genuineness. All practicum students took the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire at the beginning of the semester. The Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory was administered to the clients after the last initial interview at the end of the semester. Analysis of covariance, analysis of variance, and _t-test statistical analysis procedures were used to test the significance of the relations among the groups. Conclusions: The conclusions of this study are listed as follows: 1. Training beginning practicum counselors in verbal interaction analysis does have merit for the purpose of helping the counselors attain higher levels of empathic understanding in interpersonal processes. 2. Training beginning practicum counselors in verbal interaction analysis does have merit for the purpose of helping the counselors attain higher levels of communication of respect. 3. Counselors with lower scores on the personality trait of thre.ctia or adventuresomeness provided higher levels of empathic understanding, communication of respect and facilitative genuineness than the counselors with higher scores on this personality trait. 4. Counselors with lower scores on the personality trait of shrewdness provided higher levels of communication of respect and facilitative genuineness than counselors with lower scores on this personality trait. 5. Counselors with higher scores on self-sufficiency provided higher levels of communication of respect and facilitative genuineness than counselors with lower scores on this personality trait

Goods trade, factor mobility and welfare

This paper extends a recent class of quantitative models of international trade to incorporate factor mobility within countries. We present a model-based decomposition of the variance of economic activity into the contributions of locational fundamentals, market access and their covariance. We show how the standard framework for undertaking model-based counterfactuals in trade can be augmented to obtain predictions for endogenous changes in the distribution of economic activity across regions within countries. A region’s trade share with itself is no longer a sufficient statistic for the welfare gains from trade, which also depend on endogenous changes in the distribution of mobile factors

The economics of cities: from theory to data

Economic activity is highly unevenly distributed within cities, as reflected in the concentration of economic functions in specific locations, such as finance in the Square Mile in London. The extent to which this concentration reflects natural advantages versus agglomeration forces is central to a range of public policy issues, including the impact of local taxation and transport infrastructure improvements. This paper reviews recent quantitative urban models, which incorporate both differences in natural advantages and agglomeration forces and can be taken directly to observed data on cities. We show that these models can be used to estimate the strength of agglomeration forces and evaluate the impact of transportation infrastructure improvements on welfare and the spatial distribution of economic activity