[雙語翻譯]外文翻譯--區(qū)域經濟學一種新的經濟地理學視角（英文）

1、Regional economics: A new economic geography perspective ☆Kristian Behrens a, Jacques-François Thisse a,b,c,?a CORE, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium b CERAS, Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussée

2、s, France c CEPR, United KingdomReceived 5 August 2006; accepted 19 October 2006 Available online 12 April 2007AbstractWe show that the concepts and tools developed in new economic geography may be used to revisit severa

3、l problems in regional economics. In particular, we want to stress the following two points: (i) what do we mean by a region and (ii) what kind of interactions between regions do we want to study and how to model them? W

4、e conclude by discussing a few open problems that should be explored in more detail for regional economics to become a richer body of knowledge. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.JEL classification: R1 Keywor

5、ds: Regions; Regional economics; New economic geography1. IntroductionThis journal has been launched in 1972 under the title Regional and Urban Economics, which is almost the name of the JEL-classification entry R. The f

6、irst point we wish to make is that, by the time this journal was launched, urban economics was already a well-established field drawing on new concepts and tools. By contrast, the scientific status of regional economics

7、was less clear inRegional Science and Urban Economics 37 (2007) 457–465www.elsevier.com/locate/regec☆ We thank a referee, Richard Arnott, Wilfried Koch and Giordano Mion for helpful comments and suggestions. Kristian Beh

8、rens gratefully acknowledges financial support from the European Commission under the Marie Curie Fellowship MEIF-CT-2005-024266. ? Corresponding author. CERAS, Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, France. E-mail

9、 addresses: behrens@core.ucl.ac.be (K. Behrens), thisse@core.ucl.ac.be (J.-F. Thisse).0166-0462/$ - see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2006.10.001mind, a well-known

10、 result in set theory is that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the family of partitions in a set and the family of equivalence relations of the same set (Halmos, 1965). Recall that an equivalence relation in

11、a set is a reflexive, symmetric and transitive relation. Intuitively, one may think of an equivalence relation as a generalization of the concept of equality to that of similarity: (i) an object is always similar to itse

12、lf (reflexivity); (ii) if one object is similar to another, the latter is similar to the former (symmetry); and (iii) two objects similar to a third one are themselves similar (transitivity). Accordingly, using a particu

13、lar regional system amounts to working with a special equivalence relation defined on the space of reference. This result has two important implications: (i) any place belongs to a single region and (ii) two places belon

14、ging to the same region are considered as being identical from the standpoint of the equivalence relation, whereas two places belonging to two distinct regions are not. It is noweasy to understandwhy thereis no general a

15、greementon what a region should be: the number of equivalence relations that can be defined in a space is “huge”. Thus, depending on the point of view selected by the analyst, the regional system, whence the shape and nu

16、mber of regions, may vary. Consequently, a given area cannot be considered as a region per se. Whether or not it is part of a regional system ultimately depends on the equivalence relation that is being used. This diffic

17、ulty should not come as a surprise as defining a regional system bears some resemblance with the problem of aggregation in economic theory. In this respect, it is well known how poorly representative the so-called “repre

18、sentative consumer” may be (Kirman, 1992). Likewise, the word “industry” is still in search of a well-defined theoretical meaning (Triffin, 1940). Grouping locations within the same spatial entity, called a region, gives

19、 rise to similar difficulties. It is, therefore, probably hopeless to give a clear and precise answer to our first question, which is essentially an empirical one. When we talk about a region, we must be happy with the s

20、ame theoretical vagueness that we encounter when using the concept of industry. Note that both involve some “intermediate” level of aggregation between the macro and the micro. It should be clear from the foregoing discu

21、ssion that the main challenge in defining a regional system lies more in the empirical application one has in mind. From a purely empirical point of view, the concept of region one retains is often intrinsically linked t

22、o the availability of data. Hence, the question of the spatial scale of analysis, though already problematic in theory, becomes even more dramatic in applied research. However, such a difficulty does not dispense the ana

23、lyst from seeking meaningful empirical solutions (see, e.g. Magrini, 2004; McMillen and Smith, 2003). On the one hand, the question of the size of regions no longer matters because it is often dictated by administrative

24、classifications (e.g., the NUTS regional classification of the EU). On the other hand, one is tempted to twist theory so that it fits into the available statistical classifications. One additional problem is that, due to

25、 the nature of the data available, space must often be represented by a discrete set of points. Yet, when there are too many points, aggregation becomes necessary and gives rise to another problem, known as the MAUP (Mov

26、able Areal Unit Problem).3 Some new techniques should alleviate the MAUP problem. In particular, the use of geographical information systems and the increasing availability of micro-spatial data should allow for less rel

27、iance on arbitrarily determined regional boundaries.43 Economists and geographers do not seem to be aware that mathematicians have extensively studied the possible errors that may emerge from the aggregation of data. In

28、this perspective, Francis et al. (2007) consider and compare various aggregation error measures, identify some effective (and some ineffective) aggregation error measures, and discuss some open research areas. 4 For exam

29、ple, Duranton and Overman (2005) start from a continuous space approach to determine the degree of spatial concentration of various industrial sectors, whereas Mori et al. (2005) propose an index of industrial location t