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.

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.

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

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.

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

Multi-Product Firms and Product Switching

This paper examines the frequency, pervasiveness and determinants of product switching among U.S. manufacturing firms. We find that two-thirds of firms alter their mix of five-digit SIC products every five years, that one-third of the increase in real U.S. manufacturing shipments between 1972 and 1997 is due to the net adding and dropping of products by survivors, and that firms are more likely to drop products which are younger and have smaller production volumes relative to other firms producing the same product. The product-switching behavior we observe is consistent with an extended model of industry dynamics emphasizing firm heterogeneity and self-selection into individual product markets. Our findings suggest that product switching contributes towards a reallocation of economic activity within firms towards more productive uses.

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 Margins of US Trade

Recent research in international trade emphasizes the importance of firms' extensive margins for understanding overall patterns of trade as well as how firms respond to specific events such as trade liberalization. In this paper, we use detailed US trade statistics to provide a broad overview of how the margins of trade contribute to variation in US imports and exports across trading partners, types of trade (i.e., arm's length versus related party) and both short and long time horizons. Among other results, we highlight the differential behavior of related-party and arm's-length trade in response to the 1997 Asian financial crisis.Heterogeneous firms, product differentiation, product market entry and exit