Some dynamical models in regional economics: Economic structure and analytic tools

This chapter acquaints the reader with the use of dynamic models in regional economics. The focus is on the New Economic Geography (NEG) approach. A brief comparison is provided between NEG and other economic approaches to investigate regional inequalities. The analytic structure of a general multi-regional model is described, and some simple examples are presented, where the number of regions is assumed to be small to obtain more easily analytic and numerical results. Tools from the mathematical theory of dynamical systems are drawn to study the qualitative properties of such multi-regional model.