The Structure of Specialization and Trade in the Space Economy

In: Environment and planning. A, Volume 16, Issue 10, p. 1339-1347

Abstract

A spatially extended production and exchange economy is considered. It is first established that specialization and trade arise even in the absence of increasing returns, comparative advantages, or immobile resources. Next, it is demonstrated that all trade in a multicommodity economy is transported along the same trajectories, which are determined by the land-rent gradient. Finally, applying the concept of structural stability to the land-rent gradient field, it is shown that the configuration of central places and their surrounding hinterlands must form a quadratic, not a hexagonal, pattern, where the specialization zones around each central place locally have von Thünen character.