Localized GDP

Clayton is the county seat of St. Louis County where the bulk of the area's population lives. It's centrally located for the region, has good transportation access and most importantly, is outside of the City of St. Louis, and therefore, outside the reach of that city's income tax.

Remember, lawyers are always and everywhere the first group of people who vote with their feet.

Nordhaus should have talked with a cartographer first. The surface areas enclosed by 1 degree latitudinal and 1 degree longitudinal borders get smaller as one moves further from the equator. Why didn't he just divide the world's populated surface area into 100,000 or so equal-area blocks?

Interesting, but somewhat flawed. I read the methodology paper and found that no attempt was made to correct GDP for cost of living. In the US especially, such a correction would show much less inequality between regions.