Richard G. Smith (geographer)

Transcription

welcome everyone today we're going to begin a new unit we're going to be talking about geography and development and by john mcwethy amina relatively immutable and constant features things like a location topography climb it cluding temperature rainfall so real quality our wildlife especially parasites and the influence of all of these on development this is obviously a big topic so today which is going to focus on geography and trade so i want to begin by giving two perspectives on trade the first is the recording perspective so work are all set went to countries specialize in their comparative advantage that is they specialize in producing the good which they can produce at lowest opportunity cost and then the trade both nations are better off that i noticed that innovation is not the focus of ricardo to ricardo says are already or to the one o'clock we can get more of both goods is portugal specializes in producing wine england specializes in producing clock and then the trade sofa ricardo trade is about improvements in static efficiency notice also that in ricardo market size is really not a key variable the situation is very different adam smith adam smith has a completely different theory of trade let's take a look at that smith lays out his theory of trade in a chapter in the wealth of nations the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market and smith makes this remarkable and very deep insight he says as by means of water carriage used by ship and vote and more extensive market is opened to every sort of industry than wetland carriage alone could afford it so it is a part of the seacoast along the banks of navigable rivers that industry of every kind nationally begins to subdivide and improve so glad adam smith is saying is that when you're along a seacoast you have access to a larger market you can sell your goods in a larger market and because of that you get economies of scale but also you get specializing shin of knowledge you get people learning more as we produce more this creates improvements so for adam smith's trade is a dynamic growth story trade means larger markets larger markets means more specialized asian it means more improvements and arledge and therefore it means more so let's take a look at adam smith's theory at see if we can see it today so what we have here is a map of g<u>d<u>p</u> density</u> that is the amount of g<u>d<u>p</u> produced per square</u> kilometer and what you can see from this map is that smith was absolutely correct so what you can see is that where g<u>d<u>p</u> is where civilization is is along the</u> coast here's the coastal united states and on these navigable reverse the great lakes region you can also see uh... western europe ok all along the coast of all of this coastal area western europe highly developed well we're here to pan and of course it's the coast of china which is rapidly developing all do those export markets here again the coast of australia now in fact what you can also see is that even in places where there are great institutions where they have institutions of law and order and property rights and incentives and so forth there we can still have low g<u>d<u>p</u></u> for square a kilometer to take a look at uh... canada so most of canada it's it's like the sahara desert pay in terms of g<u>d<u>p</u></u> uh... canada where canada is developed it's along the coast and along the other coworkers close to the united states even in the united states their entire regions which really are bereft of g<u>d<u>p</u> which are</u> almost as a barren as is the sahara desert so if you're looking just at institutions you might say well even in the united states where we have these great institutions there's plenty of places where there isn't much g<u>d<u>p</u> so it must be something else</u> and geography particular closeness to rivers and closest to the sea coast is an important element of this uh... by the way economists really used to ignore geography and it's due to jeff sachs and some of his co-authors particular john gallup and andrew melador that a lot of this work started to be done in addition to the article which i've noted here these three authors have a a review article in scientific american two thousand one called the geography of poverty and wealth which i recommend it being close to rivers it being close to the sea coast is important then what is the worst thing well the worst thing that can happen is if you are lancelot let's take a look so what we're showing here at the g<u>d<u>p</u> per capita in countries which have</u> access to the coast overhear compared to countries which are landlocked over here and what you see immediately is that countries which are landlocked have half actually a little bit less than half the g<u>d<u>p</u></u> of countries which had access to the coast if we look here over the last over here at the land-locked countries you can see the saket fuel and loved ones in uh... europe austria czech republic hungary quests switzerland but equally true these countries are actually quite close to the coast and they're close to other rich countries if you take those countries that the defense has become even more stark among the uh... landlocked uh... nations they're registered side of europe is actually botswana which has diamonds pretty lucky for them but you also notice is that all of these countries here they're all in africa in fact africa has more land locked countries than anne other continent let's take a close look at why this is the case okay here's a standard looking map of the world you probably all sing them before it's not obvious from this map why africa should be particularly landlocked but there's also something funny about this map something on it take a look at greenland greenland on this map looks huge looks almost as big as africa and yet and when you check the statistics what you find is a greenland is in fact eleven th the size of africa what's going on well this is actually an illusion it's an illusion created by the particular projection we've used the market for protection to project a three-d surface namely a globe onto two dimensions whenever u take a three-d service and you map it into dimensions you're bound to get some illusions and in this case we get the allusion of size let's take a look at a different projection this is the albers projection which maintains equal slices areas we're gonna get some uh... illusions about the shape of continents but we're going to get the right equivalent sizes and on this projection what you see quite correctly is that greenland is much smaller than africa what you also see is that africa is huge africa is an enormous continent let's also show that in a different way okay here's another way of looking at africa and what you can see gan africa is a big you can fit the entire united states excluding alaska into africa you can put china as well into africa india can go into africa eastern europe most of your peers a lead germany france and spain and so forth and remember that trunk in the united states which is in land which had low g<u>d<u>p</u></u> well just map that into africa you can see what it's going here's another way of looking at this let's go back to our projection take a look at the coastline of africa as the coastline of africa now compare with the coastline of europe when you have you got all these notes in crannies in inlets and sees is the plaque seeing over and over here and so forth fact what you find if you do this if you measure the coastline is the coastline of europe is two to three times longer the coastline of africa two to three times by the way because he can actually differ depending upon how you measure those if you wards and so forth in uh... europe the fact all major of coastline makes a little bit arbitrary measure basic point however is europe it's a much smaller than africa and yet coastline of europe the access to the ocean access to the cc navigable rivers much much larger so europe as much more access to trade and does africa let's review briefly from adam smith we have that seco send navigable rivers that lisa trade to larger markets larger markets that means more specialization and improvements in knowledge and improvements in knowledge lied to in contrast with this if you're landlocked you don't get those trade you don't get radio get larger market you don't get that specialize asian you don't get that improvement in knowledge and instead you get stagnation again let's apply this to adam smith in fact had the theory and the application down in seventeen seventy-six he says there are in africa none of those great inlets such as the baltic in adriatic seas in europe the meta trainee and black sea but the europe and asia to carry maritime commerce into the interior parts about great continent and a great rivers of africa prior to greater distance from one another to get occasion to any considerable in land navigation so adam smith nailed in seventeen seventy-six one of the key connections between geography between access to the coast access to medical rivers and development maze ing there was an until some two hundred or so years later that jeff sachs and others really began to pick this up and bring it back into the growth story one reason to remember our history of economic lot okay we'll be looking more at development and geography in particular malaria and other parasites and things like that and their influences in the next lecture thanks