THE GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY: NATURE, HISTORY, AND THE ROLE OF TRADE
THE GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY: NATURE, HISTORY, AND THE ROLE OF TRADE
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DOI：
10.1093/qje/qjx030
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发表时间：
2018-02-01
影响因子：
13.7
通讯作者：
Weil, David
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Henderson, J. Vernon;Squires, Tim;Weil, David
我们通过在 240,000 个网格单元中观察到的夜间灯光来探索自然特征在确定全球经济活动空间分布方面的作用。一组简约的 24 个自然地理属性可以解释 47% 的全球光照变化和 35% 的国内光照变化。我们将地理特征分为两组，一组对农业主要重要，一组对贸易主要重要，并面临一个难题。在考察国内光照变化时，在发展较早的国家中，农业变量逐渐解释的光照变化是贸易变量的 6 倍以上，而在后发国家中，这一比率仅为 1.5 左右，尽管后者对农业的依赖程度要高得多。相应地，农业变量作为一个整体对灯光的边际效应在绝对值上更大，而贸易的边际效应则更小，早期开发者比晚期开发者。我们表明，这一明显的谜题可以通过两组国家技术冲击的持续性和不同时间来解释。对于早期开发商来说，由于农业生产率提高而导致的结构转型是在交通成本仍然很高的情况下开始的，因此城市集中在农业地区。当运输成本下降时，这些聚集仍然存在。在后发国家，运输成本在结构转型之前就已经下降。为了开发城市规模经济，制造业聚集在相对较少的地区，通常是沿海地区。与这一解释一致的是，较早发展的国家在教育和经济活动的分布上比较晚发展的国家在空间上更加平等。
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 agriculture. Correspondingly, the marginal effects of agricultural variables as a group on lights are larger in absolute value, and those for trade smaller, for early developers than for late developers. We show that this apparent puzzle is explained by persistence and the differential timing of technological shocks in the two sets of countries. For early developers, structural transformation due to rising agricultural productivity began when transport costs were still high, so cities were localized in agricultural regions. When transport costs fell, these agglomerations persisted. In late-developing countries, transport costs fell before structural transformation. To exploit urban scale economies, manufacturing agglomerated in relatively few, often coastal, locations. Consistent with this explanation, countries that developed earlier are more spatially equal in their distribution of education and economic activity than late developers.