Agglomeration Diseconomies of Traffic Congestion and Agglomeration Economies of Interaction in the Information-Oriented City

This paper presents a partial equilibrium model of land, labor, and transportation markets in an information-oriented city with traffic congestion of commuting and agglomeration economies of interaction. We derive the equilibria by numerical computations using specific utility, production, and congestion functions. The laissez-faire equilibrium is compared with the optimum. In contrast with the results of many previous papers, at the optimum the CBD becomes compact and the city more suburbanized than the laissez-faire equilibrium. We also analyze the effects of a Pigouvian tax system and subsidies on the spatial structure in the city.     

Spatial inequality and dynamics of foreign hypermarket retailers in China

The globalisation of retailing has intensified since the mid‐1990s with the rise of a group of international retailers. Foreign retailers have greatly impacted the Chinese retail market since the opening up of the retail sector in 1992. This study aims to examine spatial inequality and dynamics of foreign hypermarket retailers at different geographic scales in China. Although the relative gaps in foreign hypermarkets among Chinese regions are narrowing, the absolute gaps are widening. Logistic regression models are used to identify locational determinants of foreign retailers Carrefour, Wal‐Mart, and RT‐Mart at the intercity level. Carrefour prefers cities with larger urban district populations, longer time of being open to international retailers, and more foreign investment. While urban district populations are significant to Wal‐Mart and RT‐Mart as well, they favour cities where people have higher annual salaries and aim to achieve internal economies of scale at the provincial level. The three leading foreign retailers also have different first‐city and city size preferences in their provincial expansions.     

Multi-Firm City Versus Company Town: A Micro Foundation Model of Localization Economies

When do we have a company town and when do we have a multi‐firm city? In this paper I analyze the impact of public infrastructure investment decisions on types of cities in a decentralized urban system. This is done in a one‐sector spatial general equilibrium model of a closed economy. Investment in public infrastructures reduces the fixed set up cost of all firms within the city resulting in multi‐firm cities. Thus, in this approach localization economies are modelled explicitly instead of assuming that larger industrial size within the city enhances productivity. On the other hand, when the infrastructure is not provided, a company town will be formed by a developer because of the fixed cost required by each firm. The decision of whether to invest in the provision of public infrastructures depends on the type of city that will provide households with the highest utility. This paper characterizes the conditions that lead to each of the two equilibrium configurations.     

THE EFFECT OF RETAIL FIRM OWNERSHIP ON PRICE EQUILIBRIUM*

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the effect of retail firm ownership on price equilibrium using a simple linear-city model. It is shown that price divergence emerges due to the differences in retail firm ownership, because retail firms under different ownership internalize shopping externalities differently. It is also shown that if a commercial center has two specialized retail firms, these stores charge the same markup for different goods at the equilibrium.     

TESTING URBANIZATION ECONOMIES IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES: URBAN DIVERSITY OR URBAN SIZE?

ABSTRACT Whether urbanization economies stem from urban diversity or urban scale is not clear in the literature. This paper uses the 2004 China manufacturing census data and tests simultaneously the effects of urban size and industrial diversity on firm productivity, controlling for localization economies and human capital externalities. We find that productivity increases with city size—but at a diminishing rate, and the city size effect becomes negative for cities with population over two million. Firms also benefit from industrial diversity, and the strength of such benefit increases with city size but decreases with firm size. The characteristics of agglomeration economies in a transition economy are also discussed.     

HAVE CHANGES IN LOCALIZATION ECONOMIES BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR DECLINING PRODUCTIVITY ADVANTAGES IN LARGE CITIES?*

This paper investigates whether economies of urbanization and localization changed in two-digit manufacturing industries over the period 1967-1977. Estimates of changes in such economies indicate that the localization advantages of large industries declined in several industries, but that urbanization advantages increased for a small number of industries and decreased for a small number. Moreover, the absolute change in two-digit industry employment tends to be negatively correlated with industry size, city size held constant, and positively associated with city size, industry size held constant. These latter findings tend to support the findings regarding changes in external economies.     

Host economy impacts of transnational retail: the research agenda

The last decade has witnessed an acceleration of retail foreigndirect investment into a range of emerging markets across EastAsia, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America, led by asmall cohort of food and general merchandise retailers fromWestern Europe, and to a lesser extent, North America. Whilethese investment flows have had profound developmental impactsin host economies, research in this area is still in its infancy.This article therefore maps out a detailed research agenda withrespect to the host economy impacts of transnational retailing.After setting the scene empirically and conceptually, the articleconsiders different dimensions of these impacts on retail competitiveness,supply chain dynamics, consumption practices and consumer/civilsociety, institutional and regulatory frameworks and, reciprocally,on the retail transnational corporations themselves. It concludesby calling for a concerted interdisciplinary research effortinto this important and understudied aspect of economic globalization.     

FIRST NATURE, SECOND NATURE, AND METROPOLITAN LOCATION

ABSTRACT. Economies of scale, transportation costs, and factor mobility can interact to produce agglomerations even in the absence of any pure external economies. This paper offers a monopolistic competition model of a city that serves an agricultural hinterland; unlike most analyses in location theory, the model is fully general equilibrium, but it has strong links to older concepts in geography, notably the idea of "market potential." The analysis shows that the forward and backward linkages that hold a population concentration together also allow that concentration to occur in a variety of possible sites—that is, there are multiple equilibria (indeed a continuum) for metropolitan location.     

The Fashion Industry in Galicia: Understanding the 'Zara' Phenomenon

Galicia is traditionally one of the weaker regional economies in Spain. However it is home to one of the most successful global marketing phenomena of the age. Zara, the mid-market fashion arm of the Galician INDITEX Group, is amongst the 'culprits' that have been blamed for the demise from high street hegemony of such European retail notables as C&A, Littlewoods and Marks & Spencer. In this paper an analysis is provided of the mechanisms by which this peripheral region has succeeded in producing, from virtually nothing, a globally outstanding retail fashion industry in one of the world's most cutthroat competitive industries. It is shown that regional, national and supra-national factors have had important parts to play, but that the Galician approach is nevertheless unique, compared to that of other fashion clothing regions. Among the special features at play are high levels of tacit and codified knowledge exploitation, integrated design, production and retailing and advanced retail feedback technology that enables anticipation of customer preference.     

Cournot Retail Chains

In this paper a model of spatial Cournot competition among retail firms is devised and used to assess the effect of a variety of structural factors on retail prices and profits. The model illustrates the spatial chain of interaction that firms must anticipate to reach equilibrium when organized in chains or as independents. It shows the sensitivity of price to the location of stores, the number of stores per location, and transportation cost.     

TELECOMMUNICATION EXTERNAL ECONOMIES,CITY SIZE AND OPTIMAL PRICING FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS*

ABSTRACT. In this paper I make use of a city systems model to examine how telecommunications may affect cities in urban systems. The model offers an explanation for the observation that the share of employment in the communication-intensive producer-service sector increases with city size in the U.S. I suggest that external scale economies associated with metropolitan employment size, telecommunication network size and total number of intrametropolitan telecommunication contacts are possible explanations for this observation. I go on to suggest that the presence of telecommunication size and contact level external scale economies at the metropolitan level affects the optimal price that should be charged for local telecommunication services.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF LOCALIZATION AND URBANIZATION ECONOMIES: EVIDENCE FROM THE LOCATION OF NEW FIRMS IN SPAIN

The objective of this paper is to analyze why firms in some industries locate in specialized economic environments (localization economies) while those in other industries prefer large city locations (urbanization economies). To this end, we examine the location decisions of new manufacturing firms in Spain at the city level and for narrowly defined industries. First, we estimate firm location models to obtain estimates that reflect the importance of localization and urbanization economies in each industry. Then, we regress these estimates on industry characteristics related to the potential importance of labor market pooling, input sharing, and knowledge spillovers. Urbanization effects are high in knowledge‐intensive industries, suggesting that firms locate in large cities to benefit from knowledge spillovers. We also find that localization effects are high in industries that employ workers whose skills are more industry‐specific, suggesting that industries locate in specialized economic environments to share a common pool of specialized workers.     

携程旅行网旅游“新零售”空间格局及形成机制——以上海市线下门店为例

基于携程位于上海市的线下门店及相关POI 数据，运用 GIS 空间分析和地理探测器等方法，探讨携程旅游“新零售”空间格局、区位选址及形成机制。结果表明：①携程旅游“新零售”在发展初期，其区位选址仍具有向心性，但不如传统零售业对城市中心区位需求强烈，向中心城区边缘及城市近郊区域下沉趋势明显；②呈现集聚分布特征，形成“多中心-外扩”式分布模式；③区位选址依赖于以写字楼为主的线下生活服务场景，对商务办公区的偏好超越对商业中心的偏好。交通区位、传统旅行社分布、地租水平影响次之，CBD 趋近度、商圈等级影响较小；④携程线下门店空间格局及区位特征是企业业务板块规划、地理实体空间竞争、区域产业配套水平共同作用形成的结果。     

EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF OFFICE RENT AND AGGLOMERATION ECONOMIES: A CASE STUDY OF TORONTO*

ABSTRACT. An equilibrium model of office location is applied and tested in the Toronto metropolitan area. The model focuses on the role of communication among firms which is the driving force behind the spatial agglomeration of office firms. The model calculates the equilibrium floor rent in each district, given the existing building stock. The performance of the model is tested in terms of the goodness of fit between observed and estimated office rent in each district. By using the model, we estimate the value of agglomeration economies which is defined as changes in productivities caused by increases in the number of office firms. It is shown that the agglomeration economies in the office sector are much larger than those in manufacturing, and the external effects of agglomeration are considerably large.     

Transport Costs and Rural Development

Innovations that reduce costs of transport from rural locations may also reduce transport costs to rural areas. As transport costs fall, producers can afford to concentrate and achieve economies of scale. This paper explains an initially negative, but ultimately positive, relationship between reductions in transport costs and rural development. A two-region general equilibrium model with firm and worker spatial mobility highlights the firm and household location implications of costly transport-service use by both industry and agriculture in the context of scale economies and product differentiation. The computable general equilibrium model is initialized and verified with a bi-regional social accounting matrix and then used for simulations. Changes in relative transport costs are shown to affect relative regional wage rates, thus also determining the location of "production-cost-oriented" firms.     

Locational Equilibria in Weberian Agglomeration

A simple Weberian agglomeration is developed and then extended as an innovative fixed‐charged, colocation model over a large set of locational possibilities. The model is applied to cases in which external economies (EE) arise due to colocation alone and also cases in which EE arise due to city size. Solutions to the model are interpreted in the context of contemporary equilibrium analysis, which allows Weberian agglomeration to be interpreted in a more general way than in previous analyses. Within that context, the Nash points and Pareto efficient points in the location patterns derived in the model are shown to rarely coincide. The applications consider agglomeration from two perspectives: one is the colocation behavior of producers as the agents of agglomeration and the other is the interaction between government and those agents in the interest of agglomeration policy. Extending the analysis to games, potential Pareto efficiency and Hicks optimality are considered with respect to side payments between producers and with respect to appropriate government incentives toward agglomeration.     

Geographical structure in nineteenth-century urban retailing: Milwaukee, 1836–1890

This study explores the spatial structure of retailing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the era before the introduction of the electric streetcar in 1890. It uses city directory listings to chart changes in the numbers and types of retail outlets, their degree of nucleation and the functional complexity of such nucleations. The evidence suggests the early appearance of non-central retailing, the rapid dispersal of high as well as low order goods to non-central sites and the early emergence initially of a three-level and then, by 1870, a four-level hierarchy of shopping clusters. The pattern of retail clustering varied with the class and ethnic character of neighbourhoods, and clusters gravitated toward major arterial routes even in the pre-mass transit ear. Urban retailing in the second half of the nineteenth century was neither randomly dispersed nor over-whelmingly concentrated in a single central retail district, but developed a spatial hierarchy that clearly anticipated modern patterns.     

METROPOLITAN AGGLOMERATION AND SECTORAL AGGREGATION*

ABSTRACT. This paper proposes a procedure with which sectoral production functions can be aggregated to metropolitan production functions in the presence of external economies of scale. The procedure specifies the production functions as part of general equilibrium models. Consistency of a one-sector and a two-sector general equilibrium model is defined in terms of equality of the distribution of a nation's population over its metropolitan areas in autarky.     

线上和线下生活服务设施可达性及其协调关系——以生鲜果蔬店铺为例

作为智慧城市的重要组成部分,“新零售”得到蓬勃发展,提供当日配送服务的“新零售”深刻影响了城市生活服务的可获取性和时空可达性。本文以南京中心城区为例,运用两步移动搜索法、耦合协调度模型等方法,探究提供当日配送生鲜果蔬服务的店铺和传统生鲜果蔬实体店空间分布特征,分析线上和线下生鲜果蔬店铺的可达性及空间协调关系。研究发现,线上生活服务遵循技术扩散假说,强化了中心城区的生活服务集聚,同时线上生活服务集聚和可达性仍受实体地理空间约束;线上生活服务有悖于效率假说,对传统生活服务的空间分异具有加强作用,整体上没有提高生活服务的供给效率和空间公平性。研究结果可为新零售影响下城市生活服务设施的配置优化提供科学依据。