OECD Economics Department Working Papers
Working papers from the Economics Department of the OECD that cover the full range of the Department’s work including the economic situation, policy analysis and projections; fiscal policy, public expenditure and taxation; and structural issues including ageing, growth and productivity, migration, environment, human capital, housing, trade and investment, labour markets, regulatory reform, competition, health, and other issues.
The views expressed in these papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD or of the governments of its member countries.
- ISSN : 18151973 (en ligne)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/18151973
Have Developed Countries Escaped the Curse of Distance?
There is widespread evidence that a better access to markets contributes to raising income levels. However, no quantification of the impact of distance to markets has been made on the basis of a sample restricted to advanced — and therefore more homogeneous — countries. This paper applies the framework developed by Redding and Venables (2004) on a panel data covering 21 OECD countries over 1970-2004, and shows that, relative to the average OECD country, the cost of remoteness for countries such as Australia and New Zealand could be as high as 10% of GDP. Conversely, the benefit for centrally-located countries like Belgium and the Netherlands could be around 6-7%. Second, the paper explains why the key estimated parameter in the Redding-Venables model is biased upwards in cross-section samples that mix both developing and developed countries, because of the inability to adequately control for heterogeneity in technology levels across countries. The paper also provides a detailed discussion of the links between the ?death-of-distance? hypothesis, the evolution of transport costs and that of the elasticity of trade to distance.
Mots-clés: economic geography, transport costs, market access, distance
JEL:
F12: International Economics / Trade / Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation;
F15: International Economics / Trade / Economic Integration;
R12: Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics / General Regional Economics / Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity;
R11: Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics / General Regional Economics / Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
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