Geography, State capacity and economic change.
A spatial approach to development and its determinants in peripheral economies (19th and 21st centuries)
Summary
This project aims to describe and analyse the main patterns and drivers of regional economic inequality in the long run in three world areas: South-Western Europe, Latin America and Africa. More specifically, this project aims at enlarging the country sample and indicators of the previously available international databases of regional inequality, and at exploring the determinants behind the evolution of regional disparities in peripheral countries (compared with the industrialised core), including additional Latin American and African countries, as far as possible. Our main hypothesis is that, unlike what happened in industrialised countries, regional inequality in primary exporting economies was mainly dependent on the interaction between the inherited population distribution, the location of natural resources and the degree of integration in the international economy. In addition, in peripheral economies, domestic market integration, the ability to exploit location-specific natural resources and the degree of international integration largely depended on state capacity which, in turn, was largely dependent on the ability to take advantage of international demand and the available natural resources. Therefore, in order to obtain an adequate understanding of the determinants of regional inequality in peripheral regions, we will explore the interaction between regional disparities, natural resources, international integration and state capacity.
Research team
Pablo Astorga Junquera (Barcelona Institute for International Studies, IBEI)
Marc Badia Miró (Universitat de Barcelona)
Yolanda Blasco Martel (Universitat de Barcelona)
Anna Carreras Marín (Universitat de Barcelona)
Antonio Cubel Montesinos
Sergio Espuelas Barroso (Universitat de Barcelona)
Alfonso Herranz Loncán (Universitat de Barcelona)
Dácil Tania Juif (Universidad Carlos III)
Julio Martínez Galarraga
Katharina Muhlhoff (Universidad Carlos III)
M. José Murgui García (Universitat de València)
M. Teresa Sanchis Llopis
Francisco Javier Sanjulián Arrupe (Universitat de Barcelona)
Isabel Sanz Villarroya (Universidad de Zaragoza)
Xavier Tafunell Sambola (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Daniel A. Tirado Fabregat