区域经济学regional economic development第六章.pptVIP

These conclusions are not immutable. Policy can still play a role in promoting less developed regions and hence, in achieving a reduction in regional disparities. Regional income convergence may have important social benefits for a country that make it a worthy goal to pursue: - reduce/relieve congestion/pollution/ servicing costs in the center, thereby enhancing quality of life in the center. - provide better job opportunities/incomes in other parts of the country, thereby enhancing quality of life outside the center. The knowledge economy is not a panacea for the problem of regional disparities; it may not help at all if left on its own. Without deliberate action by government, both theory and experience to date suggest that the information economy will promote a divergence, rather than a convergence, of regional per capita income levels. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * We have talked briefly about so-called economic geography models and tied this discussion to endogenous growth models. This work has been pioneered by an economist named Paul Krugman. We are going to talk about his work and see how this can be related to the more general issue of the role of technology and the question of so-called knowledge industries as a new source of hope for less-developed regions. Krugman’s work deals with a combination of trade theory and location theory. Standard trade theory basically ignores space as an explicit argument in trying to explain trade. A standard theory of trade essentially argues that countries comparative advantage in trade depends on factor endowments. This model assumes perfect competition and constant returns to scale. Krugman basically says that neither of these assumptions is likely to be correct in today’s world, i.e., he argues that imperfect competition and increasing returns to scale are more likely to be true. In this world of imperfect competition and increasing returns to scale, trade will be driven by