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I've been asked to give a keynote at an upcoming Boston Fed conference on geographic disparities, and has a sudden urge to look at some data. In case you don't know, this (from 1991) is my most-cited paper 1/ 
Specifics of the model aside, what I argued back then was that the geography of the economy reflects a tug-of-war between "centripetal" forces that pull things together, and "centrifugal" forces that pull them apart. 2/
What this implies, in turn, is that quantitative change in these forces can produce qualitative change in the economy's dynamics. If the relative strength of the centripetal forces crosses a critical level, already leading areas start snowballing 3/
And we actually do seem to see a qualitative change in US regional dynamics circa 1979. Until then, poor states had systematically tended to converge on rich states. The picture was really striking 4/
Since then, the process has if anything gone in the opposite direction. 5/
Two interesting questions: What changed? (Knowledge economy? Decline of need for farmers? Urban revival?) And what if anything can/should we do about it? I guess I'm supposed to have answers by next fall 6/
