Geography Matters: Spatial Dimensions of Trade, Migration and Growth

This volume was prepared by Thomas Steinwachs while he was working at the ifo Center for International Economics. It was completed in September 2018 and accepted as a doctoral dissertation by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich (LMU). It is a collection of four self-contained essays which are included as separate chapters.

Each chapter considers the spatial dimension of economic processes in applied empirical work, concerning measurement, data handling and econometric methodology. Chapter 1 applies an econometric gravity analysis to bilateral trade flows to assess how successful the European Schengen Agreement has been in boosting international trade. It proposes a new indicator variable to account for the plurilateral agreement's spatial extent. Chapter 2 provides a gravity analysis of international migration flows to investigate the impact of natural disasters on the movement of people between countries. It employs spatially mapped geographic data on the physical intensity of natural disasters. Chapter 3 zooms in on the local growth effects of natural disasters and assesses the associated diversion of economic activity across space. For this purpose, it introduces a new database combining physical intensities of geological and meteorological events with night-light emissions at spatially disaggregated grid cells. Chapter 4 further investigates the role of spatial connectivity for spillover transmission, exploiting geographic information on country borders and road networks.