克鲁格曼获得2008年诺贝尔经济学奖,使得新经济地理学成为众人瞩目的焦点,也引起了经济地理学家对新经济地理学的再次关注。本文在介绍克鲁格曼在美国地理学年会专题报告的基础上,回顾比较了经济地理学家和经济学家眼中的新经济地理学,最后探讨了新经济地理学和经济地理学在理论前沿和政策研究方面的融合潜力。克鲁格曼在2010年美国地理学年会上全面回应了经济地理学家对新经济地理学的批评,并以经济学家的身份阐述了新经济地理学和传统经济地理学在学术范式和学术方法方面的差异,有助于消除经济地理学家对新经济地理学的误解。尽管新经济地理学的模型仍然存在很多不足,但是学者们仍然在努力完善模型,试图使模型的假设更加符合现实,从而结论更加可靠。新经济地理学的发展可以为经济地理学的学术实践提供新的视角。另一方面,尽管经济地理学家的视角和研究范式不同于经济学家,但是,传统经济地理学的研究更加贴近实际,更能够揭示现实世界的丰富性和复杂性,从而可以为新经济地理学的抽象研究在理论和实践上提供思路。在涉及政策方面的研究,新经济地理学面临的最大问题是其模型的假设严重偏离现实,因此其政策推论的可靠性值得商榷。同时,传统经济地理学的案例研究非常具体而全面,但是案例的特殊性使得其难以得到一般化的结论。在两者都存在各自的局限性的情况下,鼓励两者的交流和合作必然有助于经济地理研究的深入,并且可以为区域发展提供更加合理的政策建议。
The new economic geography has become a hot topic in academia after Krugman won the Nobel Prize in 2008.In the annual conference of AAG in 2009,a special session was organized to discuss about the influence of the Krugman's noble prize on economic geography.In the discussion,some economic geographers favored Krugman's theory,and some opposed it.In the next year's AAG conference,Krugman was invited to give a speech in front of geographers from all over the world about the new economic geography,which was a very good opportunity for Krugman to response to the critics from geographers.In his speech,Krugman emphasized that the new economic geography was developed at the time when the main stream economics had neglected the spatial dimension of economy for a long time.And his efforts were aimed to bring the geographical dimension into the main stream economics and it seemed that he had succeeded.Krugman acknowledged the shortcomings of the new economic geography theory in his speech.Krugman explained the differences between economics and economic geography in terms of methodology.He also reviewed the core-periphery model of the new economic geography theory and he admitted that it was still a big challenge to take the information spillover effect into account when modeling.In the final parts of his speech,Krugman pointed out that the economic geography phenomenon in the newly industrialized economies,especially China,were more consistent with the prediction of the new economic geography theory.He suggested that the new economic geography theory should be incorporated with the comparative advantage trade theory,in order to explain the present global distribution of economic activities.Krugman's speech was quite helpful to eliminate the misunderstanding of the new economic geography from geographers.The criticisms on the new economic geography from geographer and economists are compared in this article.Geographers have paid more attention to the unrealistic assumptions of the modeling.Despite the weak points of