Alexander Tarasov

Trade and the Spatial Distribution of Transport Infrastructure

Alexander Tarasov is collaborating with Gabriel Felbermayr on a project related to the interplay between an endogenous spatial distribution of transport infrastructure, intra- and international trade, and economic geography. In particular, they provide an analytical framework of open economies in which planners decide non-cooperatively on transport infrastructure investments across continuous space. They then show that the resulting equilibrium investment schedule features underinvestment that turns out to be particularly severe in border regions. This can in turn explain the border effect observed in the trade data.

While at CESifo, Mr Tarasov will work on endogenising the distribution of economics activity (which is currently exogenous) by allowing intranational migration of workers and firms. Moreover, he and Gabriel Felbermayr plan to carry out the analysis on a plane with realistic topology, rather than considering the problem on a line. This will require not only characterising optimal investment schedule for given routes but also solving for the layout of optimal transportation networks.

Mr Tarasov's main research interests focus on international trade, economic geography and organisational economics. His work has appeared in leading journals including the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, the Canadian Journal of Economics, the Journal of International Economics, the Review of International Economics, Social Choice and Welfare and The Scandinavian Journal of Economics.

Alexander Tarasov is an Assistant Professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE) in Moscow. Before joining HSE, he was an Assistant Professor at the LMU Department of Economics, Seminar for International Economics. He earned his PhD degree at Pennsylvania State University.