Geography 207Economic GeographyProfessor William B. Beyers

Teaching Assistant: Will McKeithen

• What is economic geography?

• What are its roots, and to what is it related?

• What are the goals for this course?

• What are the class requirements?

• What are the day-to-day mechanics?

Some key topics

Why locating businesses properly helps guarantee profitability

Why land use patterns arise in cities Why regional economies grow or decline How large, global corporations are

reshaping the geography of production How industrial systems are being reshaped

by the information revolution Why geography matters in economics!!

Economic Geography: Background

• Roots of Modern Economic Geography– Von Humboldt - Cosmos– Environmental Determinism– Commercial Geography– The Quantitative Revolution & Theoretical

Geography– Applied Geography, Including Business

Geographics– Regional Science, Urban Planning, Business

Administration including Marketing

Goals For This Course

• A Comprehensive Survey of the Field• Some Hands-on Experience using

materials covered in the text & lecture• An appreciation of how the materials we

will cover are treated in more advanced courses and in related fields

• Recognition of both theoretical principles and their real-world application.

Course Requirements: Mechanics

• Two Midterm Examinations• Final Examination• The Examinations are based on the

Textbook and the Lectures• Three Research Exercises• Participation in Discussion Sections• Lecture notes: Available as links off course

web page, but not all the graphics.

Grades and Points

Point Distribution - Tentative

Exam 1 and Exam 2: 100 points each

Final Exam: 100 or 150 points

Research Exercises - 35 points each

Grades:

Class Median = UW Undergraduate Median = 3.1-3.2

About Beyers

• Seattle native, live in West Seattle, UW undergrad and Ph.D. graduate

• Economic Geography is my field• Research Interests:

– Service Economy; New Economy; Economic Trends in U.S. regions; Trends in the Rural West; Offshoring; Cultural Industries

• Other: Active in Service, University Committees, Former Chair in Geography

• Enjoy Teaching this Class Immensely.

This textbook• The World Economy – by Warf and Stutz• It is the 6th Edition of this book• A major remodel (4th Edition) published in 2005, with

minor changes in the 5th and 6th Editions• Pearson/Prentice Hall spent $1 million on the graphics for

the 4th edition, and they have been revised for this edition• It is quite comprehensive• My ordering of our treatment of it will deviate somewhat

from the chapter order• Additional learning resources are available from the

publisher

My TA – Will McKeithen

• BS in Culture and Politics, Georgetown University

• He is a MA student, interested in the field of queer ecology

• He is interested in looking at the ways in which constructions of human sexuality and gender have been grafted onto animal/nonhuman subjects and how this process impacts social conceptions of “nature”

• I would like to ask him to speak about his interests and background

Chapter 1 Economic Geography:An Introduction

• Geographic Perspectives

• Five Analytical Themes for Approaching Economic Geography

• Modes of Theorizing in Economic Geography

• Capitalism

• Economic Geography of the World Economy

Geographic Perspectives

• Barney Warf’s Style: anything goes

• The geographic perspective

• Key Point: Why are activities located where they are? Space and time are interdependent

• Economic space is highly unequal

• Economic Geography as a field

Five Analytical Themes for Approaching Economic Geography

• The study of space is inseparable from the study of time

• Every place is part of a system of places• Human action always occurs in a biophysical

environment• Culture-the shape of consciousness—is

fundamental to economic geography• Social relations are a necessary starting point to

understanding societies and geographies

Modes of Theorizing in Economic Geography

• Location Theory – explaining why businesses, government, and households are located where they are in space

• Locations create the basis for spatial interaction• Different types of models are used to “explain”

behavior in space – homo economicus vs. behavioral vs. central planning

• Political Economy• Post-structuralist Economic Geography

Capitalism

• The dominant mode of production

• Predominately private ownership of the means of production

• The profit motive

• Market divisions (Figure 1.1)

The Capitalist System

Four Major Questions of the World Economy – Fig 1.1 again

• What should be produced, at what scale of output, and with what mix of inputs?

• How should factors be combined? Labor, capital, resource factors, etc.

• Where should production occur?

• Who should get output? How should it be divided?

Economics – Key Topics• Allocation of Scarce Resources• Markets for Production, Distribution,

and Consumption• The Division of Labor• Solving What, How, What Price, What

Quantity, and Where Production Takes Place

• Types of Economic Systems• Neoclassical versus Behavioral and

Structural Approaches