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Economic Geography. Nature and Scope. Branches

Economic geography is a subfield of human geography that examines economic activity and related factors. It can also be considered a subfield or methodology in economics. Economic geography has four branches, namely the primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary sectors.


This discipline employs various approaches to study a wide range of topics, including industry location, agglomeration economies (or "linkages"), transportation, international trade, development, real estate, gentrification, ethnic and gendered economies, core-periphery theory, the economics of urban form, the relationship between environment and economy (drawing from a long history of geographers studying culture-environment interaction), and globalization.


"Economic geography employs varied methodological approaches. Neoclassical location theorists, inspired by Alfred Weber, emphasize industrial location and quantitative methods. Since the 1970s, Marxist political economy, based on David Harvey's work, and the new economic geography, which considers social, cultural, and institutional factors in the spatial economy, have emerged as two major reactions against neoclassical approaches.


Economists such as Paul Krugman and Jeffrey Sachs have also contributed to the study of economic geography. Krugman coined the term "new economic geography" to describe his application of spatial thinking to international trade theory, which competes with a similarly named approach within the geography discipline. An alternative name, "geographical economics," has been suggested.


Economic geography is a broad discipline that encompasses many different methodologies for studying economic phenomena. Over time, several distinct approaches to economic geography have evolved:


Theoretical economic geography focuses on building theories about the spatial arrangement and distribution of economic activities.

Regional economic geography examines the economic conditions of specific regions or countries and deals with economic regionalization and local economic development.


Historical economic geography examines the history and development of spatial economic structures, using historical data to analyze shifts in centers of population and economic activity, patterns of regional specialization and localization, and factors that explain these changes.

Evolutionary economic geography uses concepts from evolutionary economics to understand the evolution of cities, regions, and other economic systems.


Critical economic geography is an approach based on contemporary critical geography and its philosophy.


Behavioral economic geography examines the cognitive processes underlying spatial reasoning, locational decision-making, and the behavior of firms and individuals.


Economic geography can also be viewed as a branch of anthropogeography that focuses on regional systems of human economic activity.


An alternative way of classifying approaches to the study of human economic activity is based on spatiotemporal analysis, production/consumption of economic items, and analysis of economic flow. A geographer may examine material flow, commodity flow, population flow, and information flow from different parts of the economic activity system, allowing the parameters of space-time and item to vary. By analyzing flow and production, industrial areas, residential areas, transportation sites, commercial service facilities, and finance and other economic centers can be linked together in an economic activity system.


Branches


Thematically, economic geography can be divided into several subdisciplines, including:


Geography of Agriculture: This branch of economic geography investigates the parts of the Earth's surface that are transformed by humans through primary sector activities. It focuses on the structures of agricultural landscapes and processes that lead to these spatial patterns. Research in this area usually concentrates on production, but a distinction can be made between nomothetic (e.g., distribution of spatial agricultural patterns and processes) and idiographic research (e.g., human-environment interaction and the shaping of agricultural landscapes). The latter approach is often applied within regional geography.


Geography of Industry: This branch of economic geography focuses on the location, organization, and spatial distribution of industrial activities. It seeks to understand the factors that influence the location and development of industries and how they shape local and regional economies.


Geography of International Trade: This branch of economic geography studies the patterns and processes of international trade, including the exchange of goods, services, and information across national boundaries. It seeks to understand the factors that shape the spatial patterns of trade and the impact of trade on local and regional economies.


Geography of Resources: This branch of economic geography examines the location, distribution, and exploitation of natural resources, such as minerals, energy, and water. It seeks to understand the impact of resource extraction on the environment and local and regional economies.


Geography of Transport and Communication: This branch of economic geography investigates the movement of people, goods, and information across space. It focuses on the infrastructure, technologies, and institutions that enable transportation and communication and their impact on the spatial organization of economic activities.


Geography of Finance: This branch of economic geography studies the spatial organization of financial systems and institutions, including banks, stock markets, and other financial intermediaries. It seeks to understand the factors that shape the distribution of financial activity and the impact of finance on local and regional economies.


It's worth noting that these areas of study may overlap with other geographical sciences, and interdisciplinary approaches are common in economic geography research.




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