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Objetivo

Besides taking stock of international and European research in the field, we expect the proposed conferences to advance the field of study with respect to the following dimensions. First, economic geography in Europe has tended to be strongly biased towards theoretical studies. The so-called 'new economic geography' (NEG) has led to a large number of theoretical developments with empirical work lagging far behind. Over the last couple of years, European research has started to deal with the empirics of the NEG (Combes and Lafourcade, 2001, Redding and Venables, 2001).

More economists are now pursuing this line of research in Europe, but most of the work is still in progress. The proposed conferences would therefore have an extremely beneficial effect in bringing together these researchers and their current work. In addition, the conferences will promote dialogue among geographers and economists. Until recently regional and urban economics has been an extremely fragmented field of investigation. For instance, the NEG has developed quasi-autonomously.

The gap with urban economics has since then been filled rather successfully following Paul Krugman's interest in urban issues and joint-work between other proponents of the NEG and urban economists. It is very important to maintain this dialogue. Prominent geographers have agreed to participate and organise sessions. This dialogue should become more fruitful as it will involve junior researchers on both sides.

Finally, the renewed interest in spatial issues in the 1990s has attracted many young scholars who are now 5 to 7 years into their academic career. Within Europe, thanks to a previous European Science Foundation grant and CEPR conferences, the links among them are very strong. With other areas of the world, contacts among young scholars are less frequent (with the exception of a conference organised in Kyoto in 2000). The proposed conference would give a new impetus to these intercontinental links. Furthermore, the livelihood of research in regional and urban economics can only be sustained by the inclusion of the next generation of scholars. These Euro-conferences should provide the ideal venue for this.

Convocatoria de propuestas

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Régimen de financiación

SC - High Level Scientific Conference

Coordinador

CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC POLICY RESEARCH
Aportación de la UE
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Dirección
GOSWELL ROAD 90-98
EC1V 7RR LONDON
Reino Unido

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Coste total
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