A reconsideration of the role of discontinuity in regional economic models (Q1433607)

The idea that spatial economic models are subject to bifurcations associated with critical values of transportation costs has gone through several stages of discussion. In this paper it is stated that discontinuous phenomena are more visible in regional economic systems. It is therefore not surprising that regional scientists were among the most enthusiastic about applying catastrophe theory among social scientists. However, catastrophe theory is not the only way to model discontinuity phenomena as it is just a special case of broader bifurcation theory. A variety of approaches have been used to model such discontinuities as the emergence of cities from homogeneous population distributions and the emergence of core-periphery systems with divergence of income levels at the global level.