Distance, skill deepening and development: will peripheral countries ever get rich?

• 成果类型: Article; Proceedings Paper
• 署名作者: Redding, S; Schott, PK
• 署名单位: Yale University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/S0304-3878(03)00118-4
• 发表日期: 2003
• 页码: 515-541
• 关键词: Economic geography; human capital; international inequality; international trade

摘要

This paper models the relationship between countries' distance from global economic activity, endogenous investments in education and economic development. Finns in remote locations pay greater trade costs on both exports and inter-mediate imports, reducing the amount of value added left to remunerate domestic factors of production. If skill-intensive sectors have higher trade costs, more pervasive input-output linkages or stronger increasing returns to scale, we show theoretically that remoteness depresses the skill premium and therefore incentives for human capital accumulation. Empirically, we exploit structural relationships from the model to demonstrate that countries with lower market access have lower levels of educational attainment. We also show that the world's most peripheral countries are becoming increasingly economically remote over time. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.