Gates, hubs and urban primacyin Sub-Saharan Africa

We investigate the impact of changes in international trade and domestic transport costs on the internalgeography of a domestic economy linked to the rest of the World through a hub. We address that issue bydeveloping two three regions model, namely a version of the Footlose Entrepreneur and a model à laOttaviano et al. (2002). One region represents the rest of the World, while the two others compose thedomestic economy. One region of the Domestic economy, the hub, exhibits a ‘geographical advantage’ interms of easier access to the rest of the World. We find the standard result that decreases in transports andtrade costs raise the likelihood of agglomeration in the domestic economy. However, high interregionaltransport may induce partial agglomeration in the hinterland even in case of trade integration. Thereforedepending on the level of transportation costs, hinterland remoteness may not be a locational ‘disadvantage’as Behrens et al. (2007) pointed out.....