The 'core-periphery model' is vitiated by its assumption of static expectations. That is, migration (inter-regional or intersectoral) is the key to agglomeration, but migrants base their decision on current wage differences alone--even though migration predictably alters wages and workers are (implicitly) infinitely lived. The assumption was necessary for analytic tractability. The model can have multiple stable equilibria, so allowing forward-looking expectations would have forced consideration of the very difficult perhaps even intractable issues of global stability in non-linear dynamic systems. This paper's main contribution is to present a set of solution techniques partly analytic and partly numerical that allow us to consider forward-looking expectations. These techniques reveal a startling result. If quadratic migration costs are sufficiently high, allowing forward-looking behaviour has no impact on the main results, so static expectations are truly an assumption of convenience. If migration costs are lower, however, forward-looking behaviour creates history-vs-expectations considerations. In this case self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
6921.
Length: Date of creation: Feb 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6921
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Find related papers by JEL classification: F1 - International Economics - - Trade F2 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business
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