Spatial Science Commons^™

Is Geographical Remoteness An Economic Disadvantage?, Jiaxuan Lu

Undergraduate Economic Review

Is the geographical location of a country deterministic to its level of economic development? Although economic geographers have been searching the answers to this question for decades, incongruities between different opinions still exist. This paper takes both theoretical and empirical approaches to provide a systematic answer to this question. Firstly, this paper uses industry-level gravity model of international trade to demonstrate that not all countries are negatively affected by geographical remoteness. Secondly, it employs a panel data of 83 countries from 2000 to 2017 and substantiates that while geographical remoteness decreases income levels and trade balances in OECD countries, it …