Maarten Bosker

Economic Development and the Geography of Institutions

To explain cross-country income differences, research has recently focused on the so-called deep determinants of economic development, notably institutions and geography. Maarten Bosker, together with Harry Garretse, shows that it is not only absolute geography, in terms of for instance climate or being landlocked, but also relative geography, the spatial linkages between countries, that matters for a country's GDP per capita. More specifically, they analyse the importance of the geography of institutions. They show that apart from its own institutions, the institutional quality in neighbouring countries is also important for a country's economic development.

Maarten Bosker's research focuses on the role of geography in the development process. Recent research projects look at the historical development of cities in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, the role of market access in Sub-Saharan African economic development, and the mechanisms behind the spread of civil conflict.

A work in progress will focus on the domestic infrastructure and the regional effects of trade liberalisation and will provide quasi-experimental evidence into the role of domestic infrastructure in conditioning the gains from trade, using the natural experiment of India's rapid and unexpected opening up to world markets in the early 1990s.

Maarten Bosker is Endowed Professor of Economics at the Erasmus School of Economics (Erasmus University Rotterdam), CEPR Research Affiliate, Research Fellow at the Tinbergen Institute, Affiliate at the Research Institute for History and Culture (Utrecht University), external research associate at the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, and Fellow at the Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, (University of Milan).

In 2008, Maarten Bosker received the Regional Science Association International Dissertation Award in New York for the best dissertation in the field of regional development. His research has been published in leading scientific journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Urban Economics, the Journal of Development Economics and Regional Science and Urban Economics. He has authored numerous CESifo Working Papers.