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arXiv · 2412.03755

Economic Geography and Structural Change

Clement E. Bohr·Marti Mestieri·Frederic Robert-Nicoud
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Abstract

As countries develop, the relative importance of agriculture declines and economic activity becomes spatially concentrated. We develop a model integrating structural change and regional disparities to jointly capture these phenomena. A key modeling innovation ensuring analytical tractability is the introduction of non-homothetic Cobb-Douglas preferences, which are characterized by constant unitary elasticity of substitution and non-constant income elasticity. As labor productivity increases over time, economic well-being rises, leading to a declining expenditure share on agricultural goods. Labor reallocates away from agriculture, and industry concentrates spatially, further increasing aggregate productivity: structural change and regional disparities are two mutually reinforcing outcomes and propagators of the growth process.

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Clement E. Bohr, Marti Mestieri, Frederic Robert-Nicoud. 2024-12-04. Economic Geography and Structural Change. https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.03755

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