Oedzge Atzema, Ton van Rietbergen, Jan Lambooy and Sjef van Hoof - Dynamics in economic geography

1 Application possibilities for economic geography

1.1

Rediscovery of economic geography

In 2009, the World Development Report published annually by the World Bank was entitled Reshaping Economic Geography. The report devoted par ticular attention to the role played by the physical environment. It is clear from this and from the title that geographic factors are of great importance to the World Bank in explaining economic differences between nations and regions. Another sign of increasing interest in the influence of geography on economic issues was the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics awarded to Paul Krugman for his analysis of trading patterns and locations of economic activity.

Figure 1.1 The 2009 World Development Report

Having been brought into disrepute by the Nazis, who used geographic theo ries to underpin their plans for the expansion of the Third Reich, the academic discipline of geography had a poor reputation after World War II. Geography was associated with Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil, the alleged connection between geography and race) and the geography faculties at Harvard in Boston and Columbia in New York were closed during this period, as were those at other renowned universities in the United States. For economic geography as a discipline, this was a significant blow. Slowly but surely, economic geography recovered and certainly from 1990 onwards, it has been a flourishing discipline, though the debate between econ omists and geographers goes on. Economists accuse geographers of insuffi

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