IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tky/fseres/2013cf886.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Task Trade and the Size Distribution of Cities

Author

Listed:
  • Kohei Nagamachi

    (Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo)

Abstract

　　 Taking account of the increasing importance of task trade in urban contexts, this paper provides a model of a system of cities in which ex ante identical locations specialize in tasks that differ in their skill intensity, resulting in a unique size distribution of cities. The necessary and sufficient condition for a power law including Zipf's law is derived, and a quantitative analysis shows that the model is consistent with the size distribution of U.S. cities. A welfare analysis is also conducted, suggesting excess agglomeration with sizable welfare loss under laissez-faire.

Suggested Citation

  • Kohei Nagamachi, 2013. "Task Trade and the Size Distribution of Cities," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-886, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    • Handle: RePEc:tky:fseres:2013cf886
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cirje.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/research/dp/2013/2013cf886.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wilhelm Kohler, 2004. "International outsourcing and factor prices with multistage production," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(494), pages 166-185, March.
    2. Klaus Desmet & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2013. "Urban Accounting and Welfare," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2296-2327, October.
    3. Davis, James C. & Henderson, J. Vernon, 2008. "The agglomeration of headquarters," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 445-460, September.
    4. Feldman, Maryann P. & Audretsch, David B., 1999. "Innovation in cities:: Science-based diversity, specialization and localized competition," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 409-429, February.
    5. Henderson, J V, 1974. "The Sizes and Types of Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(4), pages 640-656, September.
    6. Robert C. Feenstra & Gene M. Grossman & Douglas A. Irwin (ed.), 1996. "The Political Economy of Trade Policy: Papers in Honor of Jagdish Bhagwati," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061864, April.
    7. Kiminori Matsuyama, 2013. "Endogenous Ranking and Equilibrium Lorenz Curve Across (ex ante) Identical Countries," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(5), pages 2009-2031, September.
    8. Guy Michaels & Ferdinand Rauch & Stephen J Redding, 2019. "Task Specialization in U.S. Cities from 1880 to 2000," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 754-798.
    9. Gilles Duranton, 2007. "Urban Evolutions: The Fast, the Slow, and the Still," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 197-221, March.
    10. Kristian Behrens & Gilles Duranton & Frédéric Robert-Nicoud, 2014. "Productive Cities: Sorting, Selection, and Agglomeration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(3), pages 507-553.
    11. Pflüger, Michael & Tabuchi, Takatoshi, 2010. "The size of regions with land use for production," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 481-489, November.
    12. Behrens, Kristian & Mion, Giordano & Murata, Yasusada & Suedekum, Jens, 2017. "Spatial frictions," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 40-70.
    13. S. Rao Aiyagari, 1994. "Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 659-684.
    14. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2001. "Nursery Cities: Urban Diversity, Process Innovation, and the Life Cycle of Products," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1454-1477, December.
    15. Wen‐Tai Hsu, 2012. "Central Place Theory and City Size Distribution," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(563), pages 903-932, September.
    16. Xavier Gabaix, 2009. "Power Laws in Economics and Finance," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 255-294, May.
    17. Morris A. Davis & Francois Ortalo-Magne, 2011. "Household Expenditures, Wages, Rents," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(2), pages 248-261, April.
    18. Gene M. Grossman & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2008. "Trading Tasks: A Simple Theory of Offshoring," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1978-1997, December.
    19. Dornbusch, Rudiger & Fischer, Stanley & Samuelson, Paul A, 1977. "Comparative Advantage, Trade, and Payments in a Ricardian Model with a Continuum of Goods," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(5), pages 823-839, December.
    20. Akos Valentinyi & Berthold Herrendorf, 2008. "Measuring Factor Income Shares at the Sector Level," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(4), pages 820-835, October.
    21. Daron Acemoglu, 2002. "Directed Technical Change," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(4), pages 781-809.
    22. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    23. Gabaix, Xavier & Ioannides, Yannis M., 2004. "The evolution of city size distributions," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 53, pages 2341-2378, Elsevier.
    24. Avinash K. Dixit & Gene M. Grossman, 1982. "Trade and Protection with Multistage Production," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(4), pages 583-594.
    25. Henderson, J. Vernon & Wang, Hyoung Gun, 2007. "Urbanization and city growth: The role of institutions," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 283-313, May.
    26. Lutz Hendricks, 2011. "The Skill Composition Of U.S. Cities," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 52(1), pages 1-32, February.
    27. J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), 2004. "Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 4, number 4.
    28. Huggett, Mark, 1993. "The risk-free rate in heterogeneous-agent incomplete-insurance economies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 17(5-6), pages 953-969.
    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. Nagamachi, Kohei, 2015. "A Simple Model of Functional Specialization of Cities," MPRA Paper 61497, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Behrens, Kristian & Robert-Nicoud, Frédéric, 2015. "Agglomeration Theory with Heterogeneous Agents," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 171-245, Elsevier.
    3. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2023. "Urban Growth and Its Aggregate Implications," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(6), pages 2219-2259, November.
    4. Kohei Nagamachi, 2012. "Comparative Advantage and Skill Premium of Regions," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-868, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    5. Oshiro, Jun & Sato, Yasuhiro, 2021. "Industrial structure in urban accounting," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    6. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    7. Christian Düben & Melanie Krause, 2021. "Population, light, and the size distribution of cities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 189-211, January.
    8. Desmet, Klaus & Henderson, J. Vernon, 2015. "The Geography of Development Within Countries," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 1457-1517, Elsevier.
    9. William R. Kerr & Frederic Robert-Nicoud, 2020. "Tech Clusters," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(3), pages 50-76, Summer.
    10. José M. Gaspar, 2018. "A prospective review on New Economic Geography," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 61(2), pages 237-272, September.
    11. Lee, Sanghoon & Li, Qiang, 2013. "Uneven landscapes and city size distributions," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 19-29.
    12. Behrens, Kristian & Mion, Giordano & Murata, Yasusada & Suedekum, Jens, 2017. "Spatial frictions," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 40-70.
    13. Breinlich, Holger & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P. & Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2014. "Regional Growth and Regional Decline," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 4, pages 683-779, Elsevier.
    14. Carlino, Gerald & Kerr, William R., 2015. "Agglomeration and Innovation," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 349-404, Elsevier.
    15. Guy Michaels & Ferdinand Rauch & Stephen J Redding, 2019. "Task Specialization in U.S. Cities from 1880 to 2000," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 754-798.
    16. Nowak, Jean-Jacques & Petit, Sylvain & Sahli, Mondher, 2013. "Tourism and Globalization: A Trade Theoretic Approach," MPRA Paper 75087, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Marcus Berliant & Tomoya Mori, 2017. "Beyond urban form: How Masahisa Fujita shapes us," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 13(1), pages 5-28, March.
    18. Davis, Donald R. & Dingel, Jonathan I., 2020. "The comparative advantage of cities," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    19. Ramos, Arturo & Sanz-Gracia, Fernando, 2015. "US city size distribution revisited: Theory and empirical evidence," MPRA Paper 64051, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Guy Michaels & Ferdinand Rauch & Stephen J. Redding, 2012. "Urbanization and Structural Transformation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(2), pages 535-586.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:tky:fseres:2013cf886. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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: CIRJE administrative office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ritokjp.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.