Can we learn anything from economic geography proper?

This paper considers the ways geographers (proper) and (geographical) economists approach the study of economic geography. It argues that there are two areas where the approach of the latter is more robust than the former. First, formal models identify which assumptions are crucial in obtaining a particular result and enforce internal consistency when moving from micro to macro behaviour. Second, empirical work tends to be more rigorous. There is much greater emphasis on identifying and testing refutable predictions from theory and on dealing with issues of observational equivalence. But any approach can be improved and so the paper also identifies ways in which geographical economists could learn from the direction taken by economic geographers proper. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.