Zur Diskussion gestellt. Erster Nobelpreis für einen „economic geographer“ – eine Bewertung aus Sicht eines Wirtschaftsgeographen

First Nobel Prize given to an “economic geographer” - a critical assessment from the perspective of a proper economic geographer. This paper critically assesses both the theoretical approach of the New Economic Geography (NEG) developed by US economist Paul Krugman and the decision of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to give him the 2008 “Nobel Prize in Economics” for his work on trading patterns and the spatial concentration of economic activities. This assessment is done from the perspective of a proper economic geographer. The basics of Krugman’s NEG models are presented and discussed in the lights of the state-of-the-art of current theoretical and empirical work on NEG. A considerable effort is undertaken to identify the specific strengths and weaknesses of this attempt to explain spatial concentration of economic activities in the scope of spatial equilibrium models. Despite the fact that most of the proper economic geographers, namely in Germany, have hitherto been quite reluctant in working with NEG models and its propositions the message targeted at economic geographers is clear: they should use the huge potential of the NEG available for empirical and policy-related research more intensively than before. Thus, the decision of the Nobel Prize committee is good news not only for economists interested in spatial concentration, but for proper economic geographers as well.