Many cities are located on rivers or coasts. This paper argues that such cities developed as transportation hubs or markets for interregional trade, since these locations provide better access (lower marginal transportation costs) to other regions. Local products are collected at such hubs, and interregional trade then takes place among these transportation hubs. As the volume of trade between hubs increases, more workers are needed in order to meet labor demand for shipping and handling commodities, resulting in population agglomeration at such hubs. This paper constructs a simple three location-identical consumer model, in which transportation hub and population agglomeration emerge endogenously. In contrast with much of the literature on city formation, we introduce no economies of scale into the model. Markets are assumed to be perfectly competitive and complete. Since prices are determined in equilibrium, transportation costs and routes are simultaneously determined in the system. Population agglomeration occurs solely because of location-specific production technologies (which generates gains from trade) and the differences in transportation technologies among locations (which determines the transportation routes). It is shown that a hub city emerges when transportation technologies are heterogeneous enough.
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Length: 28 pages Date of creation: 01 Dec 1999 Date of revision: Publication status: published, Journal of Urban Economics 48, 1-28 (2000) Handle: RePEc:boc:bocoec:448
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Find related papers by JEL classification: R0 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General R1 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General Regional Economics R4 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Transportation Systems
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Glaeser, Edward L & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1992.
"Growth in Cities,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(6), pages 1126-52, December.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Edward L. Glaeser & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1991.
"Growth in Cities,"
NBER Working Papers
3787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
OTTAVIANO, Gianmarco & TABUCHI, Takatoshi & THISSE, Jacques-Franois, 1999.
"Agglomeration and trade revisited,"
CORE Discussion Papers
1999041, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
[Downloadable!]
Gianmarco Ottaviano & Takatoshi Tabuchi & Jacques-Francois Tissse, 1999.
"Agglomeration and Trade Revisited,"
CIRJE F-Series
CIRJE-F-65, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
[Downloadable!]
Gianmarco Ottaviano & Takatoshi Tabuchi & Jacques-FranÁois Thisse, 2002.
"Agglomeration and Trade Revisited,"
International Economic Review,
Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 43(2), pages 409-436, May.
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