Just got a new book from the library

I was notified today to pick up my book on reserve, The Spatial Economy: Cities, Regions, and International Trade, written by Masahisa Fujita, Paul Krugman, Anthony J. Venables.

Here is the full introduction. Although it might sound difficult for beginners, some of the questions asked inside are interesting enough for every ordinary person to think about. Below is a brief excerpt to give you a peek at the study of "new economic geography " :

Around the corner from the English National Opera lies St. Martin's Court, a short street occupied mainly by sellers of secondhand books and prints. It is a reasonable location for such shops, but there are no doubt other locations that would serve as well. Why, then, have the shops' owners chosen to be there? To be near each other. No doubt there is some interesting story about how that clusters of book and print shops originally became established, but what sustains it now is a sort of circular logic: Potential customers come to St. Martin's Court because they expect to find a range of shops to browse in, and shops locate there because they know they will have access to a large pool of potential customers.

As attentive readers may notice, the circular logic is similar to what the "Qwerty model" (mentioned in earlier articles) is trying to explain--the factors that "lock" some countries in economic growth and "lock" others out.