GEP Research Paper 07/23
Trade liberalization and the spatial distribution of economic activity within a country
Pedro Moncarz and Michael Bleaney
Abstract
The effects of the liberalization of international trade are analyzed in a New Economic Geography model of a country with an asymmetric distribution of housing between regions. Labour is mobile between regions but not between countries. Trade liberalization tends to reduce inequalities in the distribution of population between the two regions, although population is always more unequally distributed than housing. Results are similar when there is a bias in preferences towards home-produced varieties of manufactures. If consumers care relatively little about housing and transport costs are high enough, an agglomerated equilibrium becomes stable.
Issued in June 2007.
This paper is available in PDF format .