Fernando Pueyo

The Evolution of Spanish Urban Structure during the Twentieth Century

In this paper, an analysis is made of the evolution of Spanish urban structure during the period 1900-99. It is postulated that the size distribution of the cities follows a Pareto distribution, which is estimated on a yearly basis. At the same time, the hypothesis is adopted that the intradistribution dynamics can be modelled by means of a Markov chain. In this way, are deduced the so-called transition matrix and its associated vector or ergodic probabilities. This methodology allows two main results to be obtained. First, this evolution has not been homogeneous ; there has been a divergent pattern of growth during the period 1900-70; and a convergent pattern for the period 1970-99. Secondly, the intradistribution movements in the Spanish urban hierarchy have been very significant during the course of the 20th century. In addition, the existence of spatial correlation has also been detected for those cities that have either entered or exited from the sample of the 100 largest cities during the course of the century.

The Public Sector and Core-Periphery Models

In this paper, we present an extension to Krugmans core-periphery model-namely, the introduction of the public sector as a new economic agent. There are two main results: first, we demonstrate theoretically that regions with a lower tax-burden in net terms, in the sense of having lower taxes and/or higher levels of public efficiency in their management, offer greater incentives to attract economic activity; secondly, the influence of the transport costs on the equilibria is not monotonous, as under the original approach, but now depends on its size, reflecting a strong interdependence between all the parameters of the model.

The provision of public services and industrial location

In this paper we insert the public sector into Krugmans seminal core-periphery model, focusing on the provision of public services financed through taxes on rents. Since public services are an element that attracts economic activity, while taxes have the opposite effect, we find that the net effect of government becomes indeterminate and depends on the individuals subjective valuation of the public services provided. Moreover, the new parameters related with government in some cases modify Krugmans results.

Trade Liberalisation and Global-Scale Forest Transition

In this paper, we develop a theoretical model that provides an additional explanation for the forest transition based on a trade liberalisation scenario. Furthermore, in contrast with most explanations, in which the forest transition can only take place at a local level at the expense of other areas, ours is capable of supporting such phenomenon at a worldwide level. We introduce a renewable natural resource (wood), used as an input by manufacturing firms, in a framework with economic geography foundations: transport costs affect the distribution of firms between countries. In a general equilibrium, the results reproduce the forest transition at a global scale: a decrease in transport costs (in particular, that of the natural resource) has a negative effect on the worldwide stock of the natural resource in the short-term; however, this effect is offset during the transition as a consequence of industrial reallocation between countries and eventually disappears in the long-run.