Can Agglomeration Economies Explain Why People are Leaving Large Cities?

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
C B Hawley ◽  
M S Fogarty
Keyword(s):  
General Equilibrium ◽  
Large City ◽  
Indifference Curve ◽  
Agglomeration Economies ◽  
Curve Analysis ◽  
Elasticity Of Substitution ◽  
Small Cities ◽  
Environmental Goods ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Capital Intensive

In this journal, Vining and Kontuly recently posed the question “Is out-migration from large cities consistent with agglomeration economy advantages that these cities are commonly said to enjoy”. Previous authors who have responded to this query have supplied an indifference curve analysis that examines the trade-off individuals face between income and urban size (environmental goods). This paper instead provides a general equilibrium model that explicitly incorporates urban agglomeration economies to examine the conditions under which out-migration and those economies may simultaneously exist. Under the assumption that the elasticity of substitution between the outputs of large and small cities is unity, four cases can be distinguished. Our conclusion is that labor will unambiguously migrate from large cities with an increase in agglomeration economies only if large city goods are income-inelastic and large cities are relatively capital-intensive. The more reasonable hypothesis, that out-migration is a result of shrinking productivity advantages of large cities, can also be investigated by means of this general equilibrium framework.

scholarly journals Medium and Small Cities, Culture and the Economy of Culture. A Review of the Approach to the Case of Spain in Light of International Scientific Scholarship

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Barrado-Timón ◽  
Antonio Palacios ◽  
Carmen Hidalgo-Giralt
Keyword(s):  
Agglomeration Economies ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Cultural Economy ◽  
Research Gaps ◽  
Small Cities ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Considerable Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dispersion Patterns ◽  
Scientific Scholarship

While most published studies on the economy of culture present a clear bias in favor of large cities, a significant international bibliography has emerged in recent years that privileges the perspective of medium and small cities. Unfortunately, the case of Spain has been largely overlooked by these analyses; this text is intended to remedy that oversight. To that end, a bibliographic compilation has been undertaken of studies on the cultural economy and cultural development in small and medium Spanish cities, providing a review of the specific literature as contrasted with the international literature. The main conclusions indicate that the Spanish case is similar to that of other western countries. Thus, clear confirmation is found that the effects of agglomeration economies and the so-called metropolitan bias also prevail in Spain, together with dispersion patterns that, to a certain extent, favor particular small and medium cities. Furthermore, even though the literature on the use of culture for urban renewal is abundant, the same cannot be said for the economics of culture, where considerable research gaps persist, both in the geographical coverage of case studies and in the social or labor impacts of this economic model.

scholarly journals Firm Sorting and Agglomeration

2018 ◽  
Vol 108 (11) ◽  
pp. 3117-3153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecile Gaubert
Keyword(s):  
General Equilibrium ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Heterogeneous Firms ◽  
Agglomeration Economies ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
French Firm ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Firm Level Data ◽  
Aggregate Effects

To account for the uneven distribution of economic activity in space, I propose a theory of the location choices of heterogeneous firms in a variety of sectors across cities. In equilibrium, the distribution of city sizes and the sorting patterns of firms are uniquely determined and affect aggregate TFP and welfare. I estimate the model using French firm-level data and find that nearly half of the productivity advantage of large cities is due to firm sorting, the rest coming from agglomeration economies. I quantify the general equilibrium effects of place-based policies: policies that subsidize smaller cities have negative aggregate effects. (JEL D22, D24, R11, R32)

Decision-Making Coalitions on Non-partisan Councils: A Small City/Large City Comparison

1991 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 803-829
Author(s):  
Scott McAlpine ◽  
Stan Drabek
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Discriminant Analysis ◽  
Large City ◽  
Small City ◽  
Small Cities ◽  
Large Cities

AbstractThis article examines the complementary hypotheses that voting blocs can exist in small cities as well as large cities, and that voting blocs can develop and exist in non-partisan councils. In this respect the study compares the council voting patterns of two Alberta cities—Calgary and Grande Prairie—over the period of one council term, from 1983 to 1986. Well-defined voting blocs, revealed through Rice-Beyle cluster bloc analysis, are found in both councils. Moreover, discriminant analysis reveals that, contrary to previous research on bloc formation in partisan councils, bloc composition can be generally attributed to the interplay of the councillor background attributes.

scholarly journals Commuting times and the mobilisation of skills in emergent cities

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Neave O’Clery ◽  
Rafael Prieto Curiel ◽  
Eduardo Lora
Keyword(s):  
Metropolitan Area ◽  
Market Integration ◽  
Large City ◽  
Agglomeration Economies ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Passenger Transport ◽  
Employment Creation ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Optimal Exploitation ◽  
Formal Employment

AbstractLabour mobility within a large city or metropolitan area is a necessary condition for the optimal exploitation of agglomeration economies. We propose a method to establish which municipalities should be considered part of a metropolitan area based on labour market integration. In order to aggregate geographically proximate urban municipalities, we develop a network-based model that makes industry productivity (manifesting in formal employment creation) dependent on firms’ ability to find, within city limits, the diversity of skills they need to move to new complex industries. In this way, we uncover the natural city scale at which firms optimally exploit the range of skills available to them within a broad catchment area. Considering Colombian cities, we find that commuting times between 45 and 75 min, corresponding to between 43 and 62 distinct cities or integrated labour markets, allow firms to maximise formal employment creation (between 2008 and 2013). This result supports the development of passenger transport limiting commuting times within cities, connecting small- and mid-size cities to nearby large cities, and coordinating transportation investments across traditional administrative boundaries.

scholarly journals Local labor market size and qualification mismatch

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 1261-1286
Author(s):  
Francesco Berlingieri
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Agglomeration Economies ◽  
Market Size ◽  
Local Labor Market ◽  
Skill Mismatch ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Urban Wage Premium ◽  
Urbanized Areas ◽  
The One

Abstract This paper investigates the effect of the size of the local labor market on skill mismatch. Using survey data for Germany, I find that workers in large cities are both less likely to be overqualified for their job and to work in a different field than the one for which they trained. Different empirical strategies are employed to account for the potential sorting of talented workers into more urbanized areas. Results on individuals who have never moved away from the place in which they grew up and fixed effects estimates obtaining identification through regional migrants suggest that sorting does not fully explain the existing differences in qualification mismatch across areas. This provides evidence of the existence of agglomeration economies through better matches. However, lower qualification mismatch in larger cities is found to explain at best a small part of the urban wage premium.

scholarly journals Unemployment, Factor Substitution and Capital Formation

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo Kaas ◽  
Leopold von Thadden
Keyword(s):  
General Equilibrium ◽  
Equilibrium Model ◽  
Capital Formation ◽  
Wage Bargaining ◽  
Elasticity Of Substitution ◽  
Wage Setting ◽  
Dynamic General Equilibrium Model ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Factor Substitution ◽  
Adjustment Dynamics

Abstract We incorporate a wage-bargaining structure in a dynamic general equilibrium model and show how this feature changes short- and long-run properties of equilibria compared with a perfectly competitive setting.We discuss how employment, capital and income shares respond to wage-setting shocks and show that adjustment dynamics depend decisively on the magnitude of the elasticity of substitution between labour and capital. Values of the elasticity below unity add persistence, tend to preserve stability and lead to empirically plausible adjustment patterns. By contrast, values above unity introduce additional volatility, thereby making steady states potentially unstable.

scholarly journals Small cities face greater impact from automation

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (139) ◽  
pp. 20170946 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan R. Frank ◽  
Lijun Sun ◽  
Manuel Cebrian ◽  
Hyejin Youn ◽  
Iyad Rahwan
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Small Cities ◽  
Employment Opportunities ◽  
Worker Displacement ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Job Content ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Technical Professions

The city has proved to be the most successful form of human agglomeration and provides wide employment opportunities for its dwellers. As advances in robotics and artificial intelligence revive concerns about the impact of automation on jobs, a question looms: how will automation affect employment in cities? Here, we provide a comparative picture of the impact of automation across US urban areas. Small cities will undertake greater adjustments, such as worker displacement and job content substitutions. We demonstrate that large cities exhibit increased occupational and skill specialization due to increased abundance of managerial and technical professions. These occupations are not easily automatable, and, thus, reduce the potential impact of automation in large cities. Our results pass several robustness checks including potential errors in the estimation of occupational automation and subsampling of occupations. Our study provides the first empirical law connecting two societal forces: urban agglomeration and automation's impact on employment.

From Apple to Orange: Narratives of Small City Migration and Settlement among the Urban Middle Class

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard E. Ocejo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
New York City ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
York City ◽  
Small City ◽  
Small Cities ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
The City

As large cities become unaffordable, some people in the urban middle class are moving to small cities but risk replicating gentrification and its harms. Based on a qualitative research project on Newburgh, a small city north of New York City, this paper examines the narratives that middle-class urbanites construct to make sense of this migration, their new urban environment, and their place within it. These narratives describe their decision to move (migration) and their everyday lives in the city (settlement). Most importantly, their narratives are shaped by their social positions as both displaced residents and gentrifiers and as both consumers and producers of space. But despite being self-aware gentrifiers, their settlement narratives lack reflections on their own displacement from New York City, and instead emphasize how they try to mitigate gentrification’s harms. The paper concludes with a discussion of what makes gentrifiers in small cities distinct from those in large ones.

scholarly journals Legal problems of the introduction and application of digital technologies in the field of passenger transport

2018 ◽  
Vol 239 ◽  
pp. 04009
Author(s):  
R.B. Bryukhov ◽  
K.E. Kovalenko
Keyword(s):  
Business Models ◽  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Small Cities ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Doing Business ◽  
Urban Public Transport ◽  
New Business ◽  
The City ◽  
Motorised Transport

Urbanization continues. There is an outflow of population from small cities and towns to large ones. According to some estimates, 60% of the world's population will live in cities by 2060 (now 50%). The middle class is growing, and there are more and more people who buy cars. Consequently, the load on urban infrastructure and roads is increasing. The high number of traffic jams leads to negative consequences: the delay in the delivery of goods, the late arrival of people to work, etc. On the other hand, despite the best efforts of manufacturers, transport continues to pollute the atmosphere. Technologies continue to develop rapidly, new business models, rules of doing business in transport and ways to use it are emerging. Recently, there has been the emergence of such innovations as car sharing (the use of cars that are freely available in the city), various types of taxis that can be called up using a mobile phone, and improved urban public transport. In addition, the most current urban trends are the development of pedestrian areas in large cities, non-motorised transport, and bicycles.

Anti-trade Bias in Trade Policy and General Equilibrium

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno Limao ◽  
Arvind Panagariya
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
General Equilibrium ◽  
Equilibrium Model ◽  
Elasticity Of Substitution ◽  
Partial Equilibrium ◽  
Ceteris Paribus ◽  
Economy Model ◽  
Partial Equilibrium Model ◽  
Ambiguous Effect ◽  
Trade Interventions

Abstract An important question that has continued to elude trade economists is why trade interventions are biased in favor of import-competing rather than exportable sectors. Indeed, as Philip Levy (1999) points out, under a set of neutrality assumptions, the dominant political-economy model, Grossman and Helpman (1994), predicts a pro-trade bias. We demonstrate that if we replace the almost partial equilibrium model with a general equilibrium model in the Grossman-Helpman political economy model, anti-trade bias may emerge even if we assume symmetric technologies, endowments and preferences across sectors provided that the elasticity of substitution in production exceeds unity. In addition, we show that ceteris paribus, in general equilibrium, increases in the imports-to-GDP ratio lower the endogenously chosen tariff and the production share of the import sector in GDP has an ambiguous effect.

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