THE GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY: NATURE, HISTORY, AND THE ROLE OF TRADE.

ABSTRACT: We explore the role of natural characteristics in determining the worldwide spatial distribution of economic activity, as proxied by lights at night, observed across 240,000 grid cells. A parsimonious set of 24 physical geography attributes explains 47% of worldwide variation and 35% of within-country variation in lights. We divide geographic characteristics into two groups, those primarily important for agriculture and those primarily important for trade, and confront a puzzle. In examining within-country variation in lights, among countries that developed early, agricultural variables incrementally explain over 6 times as much variation in lights as do trade variables, while among late developing countries the ratio is only about 1.5, even though the latter group is far more dependent on

SUBMITTER: Henderson V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6889963 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature