Geography, access, urbanization, trade, and economic development

This paper examines the impact of geography, access, urbanization, and trade on per capita GDP in developing countries. Based on data from the World Bank and using a sample of sixty-six developing economies, we find that per capita GDP is linearly dependent upon geography and access as measured by the length of both the coastline and the land boundaries as well as the average distance to the capital city, infrastructure investments as measured by the number of airports as well as rail density and road density, the level of urbanization as measured by the agglomeration index, the percentage of the rural population with water access and sanitation services and that of the urban population with sanitation services, and trade as measured by external balance of goods and services as a percent of GDP.Infrastructure, Economic Geography, Urbanization, External Balance of Goods and Services, Agglomeration, Water and Sanitation Services, Developing Countries