This repository contains the LaTeX source and compiled PDFs for Essays in Spatial Economics, a PhD thesis by Nicolo Badino at the University of Genova.
The dissertation is organized around three papers in spatial economics, economic history, and industrial organization. The repository includes the unified thesis source, the three bundled paper sources, and the corresponding PDFs for quick reading.
- Paper PDF
- Source folder: papers/01-little-ice-age
This paper studies how climatic cooling during the Little Ice Age may have affected the incentives to innovate in pre-industrial agriculture. The core argument is that colder regions faced stronger pressure to adapt, which increased labor effort, learning-by-doing, and the accumulation of productive knowledge.
- Paper PDF
- Source folder: papers/02-industrial-diffusion
This paper examines how industrialization spread across Europe and emphasizes the role of spatial frictions. Using patents as a proxy for innovation, it studies how roads, waterways, coal access, and geographic connectivity shaped the diffusion of industrial activity.
- Paper PDF
- Source folder: papers/03-beyond-the-beach
This paper extends the Hotelling framework to a two-dimensional setting. It develops a model of spatial competition that can generate agglomeration, dispersion, and richer equilibrium patterns than the standard linear-city setup, with the broader goal of connecting theory more closely to realistic geographic environments.
- Tesi.tex: unified thesis source.
- papers/01-little-ice-age: first paper and figures.
- papers/02-industrial-diffusion: second paper and tables.
- papers/03-beyond-the-beach: third paper and figures.
- pdf: compiled PDFs for the thesis and each paper.
The repository is organized to keep the thesis self-contained: the main thesis file no longer depends on external local paths outside this project directory.