IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v64y1974i4p640-56.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Sizes and Types of Cities

Author

Listed:
  • Henderson, J V

Abstract

This paper presents a simple general equilibrium model of an economy where production and consumption occur in cities. The paper focuses on the different sizes and types of cities generated by market forces and whether these market forces generate optimally size cities. Before the model is presented, four complex questions are naively answered, revealing the most basic concepts underlying the paper and intellectual debts to the existing literature. First the model of a single city is presented. How factor rewards and cost of living vary with city size is analysed. Given these results, the paper presents an analysis of market equilibrium and optimum city size. Finally, equilibrium in an economy with multiple types of cities is examined. At the end of the paper, we discuss how natural resources and transportation costs in trade can be integrated into the model. Throughout the paper, it is assumed that capital and labour are scarce resources and perfectly mobile within the economy. The economy is situated on a flat featureless plain, large enough so that land per se is never a scarce resource (although location will be a scarce resource). This non-critical assumption implies the opportunity cost of land is zero. Lastly, there are no specified transport costs of inter-city trade.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Henderson, J V, 1974. "The Sizes and Types of Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(4), pages 640-656, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:64:y:1974:i:4:p:640-56
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%28197409%2964%3A4%3C640%3ATSATOC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R&origin=repec
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John S. Chipman, 1970. "External Economies of Scale and Competitive Equilibrium," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 84(3), pages 347-385.
    2. Horst Herberg & Murray C. Kemp, 1969. "Some Implications of Variable Returns to Scale," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 2(3), pages 403-415, August.
    3. James R. Melvin, 1969. "Increasing Returns to Scale as a Determinant of Trade," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 2(3), pages 389-402, August.
    4. Ronald W. Jones, 2018. "The Structure of Simple General Equilibrium Models," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: International Trade Theory and Competitive Models Features, Values, and Criticisms, chapter 4, pages 61-84, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. J.V. Henderson, 1972. "Trade and Factor Mobility with Increasing Returns to Scale," Working Paper 62, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    2. Suga, Nobuhito, 2007. "A monopolistic-competition model of international trade with external economies of scale," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 77-91, February.
    3. Gene M. Grossman & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2010. "External Economies and International Trade Redux," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 125(2), pages 829-858.
    4. Richard Arnott, 1998. "Economic Theory and the Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 35(7), pages 1171-1185, June.
    5. Joseph F. Francois & Douglas Nelson, 2002. "A Geometry Of Specialisation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(481), pages 649-678, July.
    6. Henry Thompson, 1998. "Production with Two Factors and Many Goods Large Firms in a Small Open Economy," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(2), pages 107-116.
    7. Emanuele Brancati & Raffaele Brancati & Dario Guarascio & Andrea Maresca & Manuel Romagnoli & Antonello Zanfei, 2018. "Firm-level Drivers of Export Performance and External Competitiveness in Italy," European Economy - Discussion Papers 2015 - 087, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    8. Wilfred J. Ethier & Roy J. Ruffin, 2008. "External Economies of Scale and Comparative Advantage," PIER Working Paper Archive 08-008, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    9. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2008. "Paul Krugman: Trade and Geography - Economies of Scale, Differentiated Products and Transport Costs," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2008-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    10. Harris, Richard G., 1989. "The New Protectionism Revisited," Queen's Institute for Economic Research Discussion Papers 275219, Queen's University - Department of Economics.
    11. Fukao Kyoji & Hamada Koichi, 1994. "International Trade and Investment under Different Rates of Time Preference," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 22-52, March.
    12. Ricardo Flores-Fillol & Rosella Nicolini, "undated". "Aerotropolis: an aviation-linked space," Working Papers 283, Barcelona School of Economics.
    13. Élodie Bertrand, 2006. "La thèse d'efficience du « théorème de Coase ». Quelle critique de la microéconomie ?," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 57(5), pages 983-1007.
    14. Henry Thompson, 1995. "Free trade and income redistribution in some developing and newly industrialized countries," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 265-280, July.
    15. Yu, Eden S.H. & Chao, Chi-Chur, 2021. "Non-traded goods, firm dynamics and wages in a service economy," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    16. Chen, Xiao & Huang, Hanwei & Ju, Jiandong & Sun, Ruoyan & Zhang, Jialiang, 2022. "Endogenous cross-region human mobility and pandemics," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117907, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Kevin J. Murphy, 2003. "A General Equilibrium Model of the Payroll Tax Incidence of State Unemployment Insurance Systems," Public Finance Review, , vol. 31(1), pages 44-65, January.
    18. Bjarne S. Jensen, 2004. "Pareto Efficiency, Relative Prices, and Solutions to CGE Models," DEGIT Conference Papers c009_006, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    19. Berbée, Paul & Brücker, Herbert & Garloff, Alfred & Sommerfeld, Katrin, 2022. "The Labor Demand Effects of Refugee Immigration: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 15833, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Michelle R. Garfinkel & Stergios Skaperdas & Constantinos Syropoulos, 2009. "International Trade and Transnational Insecurity: How Comparative Advantage and Power are Jointly Determined," Working Papers 080921, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:64:y:1974:i:4:p:640-56. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.