Editor's Introduction

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Jan, 2001  

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Professor Stephen J. Meardon directly engages Krugman. By carefully analyzing the scholarly work of Gunnar Myrdal and Francois Perroux, much can be learned about the fate of some of the leading ideas in economics. Myrdal saw the appreciation of agglomeration economies as directly linked to a rejection of traditional or classical economics. Perroux wanted to intergrate the ideas of power and domination into a body of economic analysis that seemed to leave no room for these phenomena. Both economists wished to devise a new economic geography but not in the fashion recommended by Krugman and others, which relies so heavily on rational choice and the solution of equations. The standard techniques may indeed distort the empirical phenomena of agglomeration and cumulative expansion that are linked to the importance of location and space.

Once we look for predecessors they are sure to turn up. One important example is none other than Henry George, who as early as 1879 showed himself a pioneering student of the phenomena of agglomeration. Whereas many other writers had failed to put their insights into a coherent framework, George succeeded quite dramatically, pioneering what Professor John Whitaker declares "significant extensions to the classical theory." I am delighted to offer in this volume Whiraker's ingenious reconstruction of George's growth theory as it was presented in Book IV of Progress and Poverty.

We also have a suggestive chapter on European or continental economic thinking and its linkages to the important problem of city and country. I was delighted when Professors Jurgen G. Backhaus and Gerrit Meijer submitted this piece. They review some of the most important German language writers, including Henrich von Storch, Gustav Schmoller, Werner Sombart, and Wilhelm Roepke. Perhaps because of these thinkers' location nearer to the eastern border of Europe, they were more attentive to the evolutionary development of cities on open plains and the like. Each writer emphasized a different problem in the development of cities. Von Storch wrote for the Russian monarch and urged that the busy cities in Russia assume a greater role in promoting the rise of wealth and culture in the countryside. Schmoller took careful notice of the consequences of industrialization. Sombart pushed the analysis toward an actual theory of the city, and Roepke counseled about what sorts of government interventions were suited to a h uman and just community. Still, when the city of Marl was engineered by the German government, the phenomenon of mass boredom--somewhat overlooked by the earlier writers--reared its ugly head. The Backhaus-Meijer paper invites further discussion and comment. I was also happy to include the paper by Daniel Block and E. Melanie DuPuis, which nicely emphasizes the historical importance of Heinrich von Thunen's Isolated State on various subfields of academic study, including geography, agricultural economics, and sociology. Each of these historical papers breaks new ground.