Urban Concentration: The Role of Increasing Returns and Transport Costs

摘要: Very large urban centers are a conspicuous feature of many developing economies, yet the subject size distribution cities (as opposed to such issues as rural-urban migration) has been neglected by development economists. This article argues that some important insights into concentration, especially tendency countries have very primate cities, can be derived from recent approaches economic geography. Three compared: well-established neoclassical systems theory, which emphasizes tradeoff between agglomeration economies and diseconomies city size; new geography, attempts derive effects interactions among market size, transportation costs, increasing returns at firm level; nihilistic view emerge out random process in there roughly constant size. The suggests Washington consensus policies reduced government inte...