Teaching

Economic Geography, Regional and Urban Economics

Instructors: Andrea Laßmann
Shortname: Econ. Geography
Course No.: 03.897.1130
Course Type: Vorlesung

Requirements / organisational issues

Prerequisites: Students should be familiar with intermediate microeconomics and basic international trade theory.

Recommended reading list

Recommended literature:
Books used in this course (optional):

  1. Economic Geography, by Pierre-Philippe Combes, Thierry Mayer, and Jacques-François Thisse (2008)
  2. Economic Geography and Public Policy, by Richard Baldwin, Rikard Forslid, Philippe Martin,Gianmarco Ottaviano, and Frederic Robert-Nicoud (2003)

Contents

Content and objectives:
Why does economic activity cluster in certain regions while others fall behind? Understanding the answers to this question is key to shaping effective policies in the European Union and beyond. This course provides students with theoretical frameworks and empirical tools to analyze the geographic distribution of economic activities and regional disparities. By the end, students will be equipped to assess the factors driving economic agglomeration, the welfare effects, and policies designed to address them.
 
The lecture covers the following key areas:

  1. New economic geography (NEG) models, new trade theory and the gravity model of international trade
  2. Empirical strategies to test economic theories
  3. Quantitative spatial equilibrium models
  4. Distribution of city sizes within countries or regions (Zipf’s law)

The tutorial supports you in mastering the lecture content using mathematical and graphical analysis. It allows you to become familiar with related empirical work by learning basics of spatial analysis and gravity regressions in R.
 
Students will tackle questions such as: Why is economic activity unevenly distributed across regions and within cities? What drives the international flow of production, trade, and investment? What are the welfare implications of these patterns? And how do agglomerations form and evolve?"

Grading: E-exam (60 minutes) covering the lecture content and similar to the problem sets covered in the tutorials. A mock exam will be provided. Successful students will receive 6 ECTS. Active participation in the class is highly acknowledged.

Additional information

Extra Help: 
We will make the materials available to all enrolled students via LMS Moodle. Do not hesitate to reach out by email or during office hours to discuss your questions concerning the course. You can obtain R and RStudio via the ZDV apps. You do not need to be familiar with R to take this course. There are also many online tutorials, for instance here: https://ignaciomsarmiento.github.io/2017/02/07/An-Introduction-to-Spatial-Econometrics-in-R.html.

Dates

Date (Day of the week) Time Location
04/25/2025 (Friday) 09:00 - 18:00 00 245 RW 3
1226 - Haus Recht und Wirtschaft I
05/16/2025 (Friday) 09:00 - 18:00 00 245 RW 3
1226 - Haus Recht und Wirtschaft I
06/06/2025 (Friday) 09:00 - 18:00 00 245 RW 3
1226 - Haus Recht und Wirtschaft I
07/02/2025 (Wednesday) 12:15 - 13:45 Online