History of Spatial Economic Theory

241 Pages·1983·16.316 MB·English

by  Claude Ponsard (auth.)

Texts and Monographs in
Economics and Mathematical Systems
Edited by
Martin J. Beckmann and Wilhelm Krelle
Claude Ponsard
History of
Spatial
Economic Theory
With 44 Figures and 752 References
Springer-Verlag
Berlin Heidelberg New York Tokyo 1983
Claude Ponsard
Professor at the University of Dijon and
Director of the Institute of Economic Mathematics (C.N.R.S.)
4, boulevard Gabriel
F-21000 Dijon
Translated into English by
Benjamin H. Stevens
President of the Regional Science Research Institute
Margaret Chevaillier
Lecturer at the University of Oijon
Joaquin P.Pujol
Associated with the International Monetary Fund
Revised version of the original French edition entitled
"Histoire des theories economiques spatiales"
Paris, Librairie Armand Colin, 1958
ISBN-13: 978-3-642-82127-1 e-ISBN-13: 978-3-642-82125-7
001: 10.1007/978-3-642-82125-7
This work is subject to copyright All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of
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© Springer-Yerlag Berlin Heidelberg 1983
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1983
The use of registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the
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laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
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Acknowledgements
It has taken a long time to put this book together and I am greatly indebted to a
number of people.
First of all, Mr. Walter ISARD, Professor at Cornell University, heartily encouraged
the idea of an English edition of my "Histoire des theories economiques spatiales".
Mr. Benjamin H. STEVENS, President of the Regional Science Research Institute, and his
associate, at that time, Mr. Joaquin P. PUJOL produced the first translation of the
1958 French edition. My gratitude goes out to my American colleagues whose contribution
was decisive.
More recently that version has been revised, enlarged and brought up to date in France.
I wish to thank Mrs. Margaret CHEVAILLIER, Lecturer at the University of Dijon, who
took on the difficult task of translating my additions to the book and of co-ordinating
the work as a whole. Miss Marie-Christine NESME, Secretary of l'Institut de Mathemati
ques Economiques, undertook the particularly thankless work of typing the manuscript.
I am deeply grateful for her unfailing dedication.
Of course, I alone remain responsible for this translation which I have followed
through its different stages checking all the typescripts.
Finally, I wish to particularly thank, Mr. Martin J. BECKMANN, Professor at Brown
University and Technische Universitat Munchen, who agreed to publish this book in the
new founded collection "Texts and Monographs in Economics and Mathematical Systems,
Springer-Verlag".
In the preface to the original French edition, I paid tribute to those masters who had
given me unspairing encouragement. I remain as indebted to them now as I did then and
take this opportunity to renew my gratitude.
Claude PONSARD
Contents
Introduction. 1
Chapter 1. Before Thunen. 5
Section 1. Space in 18th Century Economic Thought. 6
Section 2. The Break Between Spatial Analysis and the English
Classical School. 10
Chapter 2. Johann-Heinrich Von Thunen. 13
Introduction. Genesis of Thunen's Theories. 13
Section 1. The Model of Concentric Rings. 14
Section 2. Thunen and His Time. l~
Conclusion. 17
Chapter 3. From Thunen to Weber. 19
Section 1. The Anglo-Saxon Descriptions. 19
Section 2. Towards the First German Deductive Theories. 20
Chapter 4. Alfred Weber. 23
Introduction. Historical and Theoretical Background of the
Weberian Analysis. 23
Section 1. Parameters and Assumptions. 24
Section 2. The Three Types of Location Orientation. 25
1. The Point of Minimum Transport Cost. 25
2. Labor Orientation. ~6
3. Agglomeration. 27
4. Total Orientation. 29
Section 3. The System of Locations. 3Q
Conclusion. 31
Chapter 5. From Weber to Palander. 33
Section 1. Andreas Predohl. 33
1. Substitution and Location. 34
2. The General Theory of Location. 35
Section 2. From Englander to Christal1er. 3~
Section 3. From Fetter to Ohlin. 41
Chapter 6. Tord F~lander. 47
Introduction. The Goals and Methods of Palander's Theories. 47
Section 1. Market and Location. 50
Section 2. Transport Cost, Location of Production, and Market
Size. 53
Section 3. Conditions of Competition and Location. 57
Conclusion. 60
Chapter 7. From Palander to Losch. 61
Chapter 8. August Losch. 65
Introduction. The Background for Losch's Theories. 55
Section 1. The Theory of Location. 6<;
Section 2. The Theory of Regions. 72
Section 3. The Theory of Exchange. 80
Conclusion. 87
Chapter 9. From Losch to the Nineteen Fifties. 89
Section 1. Partial Spatial Equilibria. 89
Section 2. General Spatial Equilibrium. 92
XII
Chapter 10. Since the Nineteen Fifties. 99
Introduction. The Scientific Environment During the Second
Half of the 20th Century. 99
Section 1. The Paradigms. 100
1. The Perennity of Thunen's Concentric Rings. 100
2. Weber's Problem Generalized. 102
3. Hotelling's Law. 106
4. The Christaller-Losch Central Places ~rchetype. 108
Section 2. New Directions. 113
1. The Construction of Models of Spatial Interaction. 113
2. The Development of the Theory of General Spatial
Equilibrium. 116
3. The Elaboration of a Theory of Spatial Public
Economics. 117
4. The Birth of Spatial Econometrics. 119
5.Furthering the Concept of Economic Space. 120
Conclusion. 125
Conclusion. 127
Mathematical Appendix. 129
I. Von Thunen's Models. 131
1. Concentric Rings. 131
2. Theory of the Natural Wage. 134
II. Weber's Models. l3~
1. The Point of Minimum Transport Cost. 136
2. Labor Deviation (The Isodapane Technique). 143
3. Agglomeration. 143
III. Palander's Models. 148
1. The Delineation of the Market. 148
2. Price Policy and Transport Costs. 151
3. Isoline Technique. 158
4. Law of Refraction. 165
5. Conditions of Competition and Location. 1~7
IV. Losch's Models. 175
1. Location of Two Agricultural Products. 175
2. The Equations of General Spatial Equilibrium. 182
3. Economic Regions. 185
4. Spatial Differentiation of Prices. 191
Chronological Bibliography. 195
Author Index. 231
Introduction
The concept of space has always been a fundamental element in
various branches of knowledge. The concept often appears in the
evolution of knowledge, either as a basis of theory or as a factor in
research. It is associated, more or less directly, with all the history
of scientific thought.
At the level of simple common sense, the importance of the concept
of space is only equaled by its lack of precision. It was part of legend
before becoming part of history. To indicate the founding of Rome,
Romulus started by drawing the boundaries, locating its landmarks in a
discontinuous space after having cut the limits of a continuous space.
However, neither geographical explorations nor mathematico-logical
speculations have ever completely removed the mystery from the concept
of space. For all its simple common sense, its mystique remains intact.
The privileged position occupied by the concept of space in the
history of science and the vagueness of its meaning in the current use
of the term, far from constituting a paradox, are mutually explanatory.
Every concept of space is necessarily the result of an abstraction,
whether the process by which it is reached is through mathematics,
psychology, biology, or any other discipline. At the level of common
knowledge, the space-time concept is the base upon which are arranged
individual experiences. It is thus easy to understand how the concept of
space can be understood only through an orderly arrangement of these
experiences and their integration into a logical scheme.
With regard to economic science, the concept of space has raised
similar difficulties. The backwardness of economic knowledge in the area
of space becomes apparent upon realization that by the second half of
the 20th Century, its study was just beginning to interest a significant
number of economists, after having long remained the preoccupation of a
few of the less known economic theorists. If the rapid development of
both economics in general and economic dynamics in particular is taken
into account, the disparity in the results achieved in spatial economics
can be seen as the result of the unequal emphasis given to various areas
of economic knowledge.
Two major characteristics of the history of spatial economic
theories have been less development of the concept of economic space
than the concepts of space used by other sciences, and less development
of economic analysis of spatial phenomena than other economic phenomena,
especially dynamics. The difficulty that economics had in defining its
own objectives as a science is related to its difficulty in liberating
itself from other forms of thought, especially of a moral or political
nature. This is why initial attempts at spatial economics are not found
until the beginning of the 19th Century. A controversy could, no doubt,
be started as to whether or not some beginnings of spatial economic
thought are found in the literature of the 18th Century. Whatever the
cause, the development of a true economic consideration of spatial
ph~nomena occurred in the 19th and particularly in the 20th Century. Its
history, therefore, is relatively recent.
2
On the other hand, the little attention paid by economists to the
spatial factor explains the continuous divergence between progress in
spatial economics and progress in general economics. Thus, the history
of spatial theories is not only recent, but also brief. The difficulties
that may exist in mastering it are due more to the novelty of the
subject than to the true scope of the field covered by it. It is not
easy to gather and interrelate the contributions in the field since they
are dispersed allover the world. Even more difficult is the task of
penetrating the thoughts of the authors who were led, either by
necessity or by imprecision of thought, to reason with the help of vague
and inappropriate concepts, or to express themselves in a confused
language or with the help of a complicated mathematical apparatus.
The history of spatial theories is that of the progressive
refinement of the frameworks of analysis, the patient search for their
coordination and their unity, and the slow development of appropriate
descriptive and analytical methods. It is to be understood that these
advances are not always continuous and wellordered, even if the general
direction of development is well marked and relatively simple to
underline (1).
The principle task and main difficulty of the historian of spatial
economic analysis is not merely to describe the content of writings, but
to discover the general lines of the authors'thoughts, to be able to
isolate the important schools of thought, and to trace the connections
which unite the major authors and tie the less important authors to
them. Through time, the degree of economic knowledge of the spatial
factors varies from one author to another, from one school of thought to
another, from one country to another, so that it is often arduous to
disect the currents of research that have been exhausted from those that
have not yet delivered all their possible results. At each step it is
also important to disclose not only the immediate contributors but also
the forerunners of the future, since the intUition of genius is often
distinct from systematic elaboration. From discontinuous progress,
diverse contributions, trial and error, it is especially important to
distill the continuity of a homogeneous thought through its object and
the constancy of continuing study by its objective. With respect to the
latter point, the difference in points of view should not overshadow the
essential unity of the development of spatial thought.
Certainly, these difficulties are not unique to the understanding
of the history of spatial economics. They are present in any history of
theory, whether economic or not. Also, as with any other history of
thought, the history of spatial economic theories appears a priori to be
dominated by a few major authors. Their works appear as a vast creative
synthesis - a synthesis in that it reflects the knowledge acquired at a
given time - a creative synthesis in that by its organization and
content it marks a radical expansion of knowledge with respect to what
was previously known. These works thus provide the historian with the
first indispensable reference points. Starting with them, it becomes
possible to find a basis for order and a non-arbitrary organizing
principle. Around them, it becomes possible to place the works of
secondary authors, who are important because of their marginal
contributions or because of the intellectual atmosphere they create.