Winners, losers and future prospects: The economic geography of transition countries

a column by Klaus Desmet, Dávid Krisztián Nagy, Dzhamilya Nigmatulina and Nathaniel Young for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The economic geography of transition economies has changed dramatically over the last quarter century, with large urban areas growing fast and many smaller places facing declining populations.

Using a high-resolution spatial growth model, this column projects the transition economies as a whole to perform economically well over the next decades, especially the region’s densest places. Large-scale infrastructure projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative will have a positive impact, but not more so than modest reductions of general trade frictions.

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