IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bsl/wpaper/2017-01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Energy-centric Theory of Agglomeration

Author

Listed:
  • Moreno-Cruz, Juan

    (University of Basel)

  • Taylor, M. Scott

Abstract

This paper sets out a simple spatial model of energy exploitation to ask how the lo-cation and productivity of energy resources affects the distribution of economic activityacross geographic space. By combining elements from energy economics and economicgeography we link the productivity of energy resources to the incentives for economicactivity to agglomerate. We fnd a novel scaling law links the productivity of energyresources to population sizes, while rivers and roads effectively magnify productivity.We show how our theory's predictions concerning a single core, aggregate to predictionsover regional landscapes and city size distributions at the country level.

Suggested Citation

  • Moreno-Cruz, Juan & Taylor, M. Scott, 2017. "An Energy-centric Theory of Agglomeration," Working papers 2017/01, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    • Handle: RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2017/01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://edoc.unibas.ch/61316/1/20180306173212_5a9ec28c67d02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nathan Nunn & Nancy Qian, 2011. "The Potato's Contribution to Population and Urbanization: Evidence From A Historical Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(2), pages 593-650.
    2. Alan Fernihough & Kevin Hjortshøj, 2021. "Coal and the European Industrial Revolution," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(635), pages 1135-1149.
    3. Gustav Engstrom & William Brock & Anastasios Xepapadeas, 2012. "Energy Balance Climate Models and the Spatial Structure of Optimal Mitigation Policies," DEOS Working Papers 1202, Athens University of Economics and Business.
    4. Swierzbinski, Joseph E & Mendelsohn, Robert, 1989. "Exploration and Exhaustible Resources: The Microfoundations of Aggregate Models," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 30(1), pages 175-186, February.
    5. M. Scott Taylor & Juan Moreno Cruz, "undated". "Back to the Future of Green Powered Economies," Working Papers 2014-69, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 29 Sep 2014.
    6. Rappaport, Jordan & Sachs, Jeffrey D, 2003. "The United States as a Coastal Nation," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 5-46, March.
    7. Head, Keith & Mayer, Thierry, 2004. "The empirics of agglomeration and trade," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 59, pages 2609-2669, Elsevier.
    8. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/10191 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Klaus Desmet & Dávid Krisztián Nagy & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2015. "The Geography of Development: Evaluating Migration Restrictions and Coastal Flooding," NBER Working Papers 21087, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Kolstad Charles D., 1994. "Hotelling Rents in Hotelling Space: Product Differentiation in Exhaustible Resource Markets," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 163-180, March.
    11. Rodney Ramcharan, 2009. "Why an economic core: domestic transport costs," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 9(4), pages 559-581, July.
    12. repec:clg:wpaper:2012-08 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Allen,Robert C., 2009. "The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521868273.
    14. Klaus Desmet & Dávid Krisztián Nagy & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2018. "The Geography of Development," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(3), pages 903-983.
    15. Sanchirico, James N. & Wilen, James E., 1999. "Bioeconomics of Spatial Exploitation in a Patchy Environment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 129-150, March.
    16. Wrigley,E. A., 2010. "Energy and the English Industrial Revolution," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521766937.
    17. Chakravorty, Ujjayant & Roumasset, James & Tse, Kinping, 1997. "Endogenous Substitution among Energy Resources and Global Warming," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1201-1234, December.
    18. Pindyck, Robert S, 1978. "The Optimal Exploration and Production of Nonrenewable Resources," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(5), pages 841-861, October.
    19. Wrigley,E. A., 2010. "Energy and the English Industrial Revolution," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521131858.
    20. Severnini, Edson R., 2014. "The Power of Hydroelectric Dams: Agglomeration Spillovers," IZA Discussion Papers 8082, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    21. Roger Fouquet & Peter J. G. Pearson, 1998. "A Thousand Years of Energy Use in the United Kingdom," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4), pages 1-41.
    22. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10191 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Gerard Gaudet & Michel Moreaux & Stephen W. Salant, 2001. "Intertemporal Depletion of Resource Sites by Spatially Distributed Users," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1149-1159, September.
    24. Donald R. Davis & David E. Weinstein, 2002. "Bones, Bombs, and Break Points: The Geography of Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1269-1289, December.
    25. Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Strange, William C., 2004. "Evidence on the nature and sources of agglomeration economies," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 49, pages 2119-2171, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Moreno-Cruz, Juan & Taylor, M. Scott, 2020. "Food, Fuel and the Domesday Economy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. M. Scott Taylor & Juan Moreno Cruz, "undated". "A Spatial Approach to Energy Economics," Working Papers 2014-68, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 29 Sep 2014.
    2. M. Scott Taylor & Moreno, "undated". "A Spatial Approach to Energy Economics: Theory, Measurement and Empirics," Working Papers 2014-67, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 29 Sep 2014.
    3. Agovino, Massimiliano & Bartoletto, Silvana & Garofalo, Antonio, 2019. "Modelling the relationship between energy intensity and GDP for European countries: An historical perspective (1800–2000)," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 114-134.
    4. Hanlon, W.Walker & Heblich, Stephan, 2022. "History and urban economics," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    5. Wouter Ryckbosch & Wout Saelens, 2023. "Fuelling the urban economy: A comparative study of energy in the Low Countries, 1600–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 76(1), pages 221-256, February.
    6. Nielsen, Hana, 2021. "Coal and Sugar: The Black and White Gold of Czech Industrialization (1841-1863)," Lund Papers in Economic History 229, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    7. Kyle C. Meng, 2016. "Estimating Path Dependence in Energy Transitions," NBER Working Papers 22536, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Jedwab, Remi & Vollrath, Dietrich, 2015. "Urbanization without growth in historical perspective," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 1-21.
    9. Sofia Teives Henriques & Paul Sharp, 2021. "Without coal in the age of steam and dams in the age of electricity: an explanation for the failure of Portugal to industrialize before the Second World War," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 25(1), pages 85-105.
    10. Moreno-Cruz, Juan & Taylor, M. Scott, 2020. "Food, Fuel and the Domesday Economy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    11. Sofia Teives Henriques & Paul Sharp, 2016. "The Danish agricultural revolution in an energy perspective: a case of development with few domestic energy sources," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 69(3), pages 844-869, August.
    12. Pearson, Peter J.G. & Foxon, Timothy J., 2012. "A low carbon industrial revolution? Insights and challenges from past technological and economic transformations," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 117-127.
    13. Ravshonbek Otojanov & Roger Fouquet & Brigitte Granville, 2023. "Factor prices and induced technical change in the industrial revolution," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 76(2), pages 599-623, May.
    14. Kander, Astrid & Stern, David I., 2014. "Economic growth and the transition from traditional to modern energy in Sweden," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 56-65.
    15. John Foster, 2015. "Energy, Knowledge and Economic Growth," Economic Complexity and Evolution, in: Andreas Pyka & John Foster (ed.), The Evolution of Economic and Innovation Systems, edition 127, pages 9-39, Springer.
    16. Kristin Ranestad & Paul Sharp, 2023. "Success through failure? Four centuries of searching for Danish coal," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 65(8), pages 1341-1365, November.
    17. Matthias Flückiger & Markus Ludwig, 2019. "Transport infrastructure, growth and persistence: The rise and demise of the Sui Canal," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(2), pages 624-666, May.
    18. Breinlich, Holger & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P. & Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2014. "Regional Growth and Regional Decline," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 4, pages 683-779, Elsevier.
    19. Alan Fernihough & Kevin Hjortshøj, 2021. "Coal and the European Industrial Revolution," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(635), pages 1135-1149.
    20. Alexandra de Pleijt & Alessandro Nuvolari & Jacob Weisdorf, 2020. "Human Capital Formation During the First Industrial Revolution: Evidence from the use of Steam Engines," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 829-889.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N9 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History
    • Q40 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - General
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • R3 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2017/01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: WWZ (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wwzbsch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.