The New Economic Geography is dead, long live the New Economic Geography!

Coming soon here a series of wonkish posts on my field, the New Economy Geography (NEG) born with Krugman (1991) and about urban economics. This series is motivated by a discussion with Beatrice Cherrier, a "though leader" among historians of economics, who suggests that the NEG has cannibalized urban economics. 

I don't think so, the NEG has brought very little contributions to urban studies and in this series I will show that the opposite hold, many authors that have started their carrier with the NEG are now urban or trade economists that only occasionally use the NEG framework which is something like a Proust's madeleine for them. Instead, urban and international economics have cannibalized the NEG. The NEG is dead, long live to the NEG!

This announcement is not a teaser (ok, maybe a little), just the illustration that I don't have many time to blog, so I will divide this task in three parts.

On Monday, the first part on the origin of the NEG (before 1990). Here is is.

On Friday, something about the triumph of the NEG 1990-2000.

Next week, the last hope of reunification with quantitative models.

F. Candau

As a soundtrack of this post, Max (alias @blinis), proposes "Battle for the Soul of the Universe" ;)