(2024-09-20) Davies Me Versus The Scatterplots

Dan Davies: me versus the scatterplots... bugging me for a while... This week - economic geography. I probably shouldn’t write off entire fields of enquiry en bloc; even lab-based experimental economics probably has some things in it which generated reproducible results. But econ-geog really seems to me to generate a lot of amazingly simplistic takes, usually involving the creation of scatterplots.

I could bore on at length on this subject - particularly when those scatterplots have city size on one axis and productivity on another, and are being used to try to support some inference beyond that of “if something grows a lot then it will get bigger”

If someone claims that they have found the single universal formula which determines success for all companies everywhere, regardless of their size, location, history or industry, then we correctly laugh at them, call them a charlatan and relegate their books to the “Guru Of The Month Club” section of the shop.

But when someone comes along doing the same thing for cities and regions, we seem much more inclined to take them seriously and publish special editions of economic geography journals discussing their international comparative evidence. (cf (2007-04-18) Urban Growth Benefits)