Journal Article
New Economic Geography and Reunified Germany at Twenty: A Fruitful Match?
Autoren
Erscheinungsdatum
DOI
10.1080/17421772.2012.760132
JEL Classification
F12
F15
R12
R23
Schlagworte
Deutschland
We qualitatively match new economic geography (NEG) to stylized facts on German economic integration after 1989. We find that NEG may explain German integration reasonably well. Germany may currently be close to the peak of the bell curve, which describes the long-run relationship between integration and agglomeration in Germany. As a consequence, further economic integration between the two parts of Germany may eventually foster redispersion of economic activity toward East Germany. We also identify limitations of NEG for explaining German integration, most notably the analytical complexity of multi-region models and its neglect of knowledge spillovers and labor pooling.
