Aging Nations and the Future of Cities

Jacques Thisse and Gaigné, Carl
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Carl Gaigne

No 7403, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We investigate whether an aging population may challenge the supremacy of large working-cities. To this end, we develop an economic geography model with two types of individuals (workers and retirees) and two sectors (local services and manufacturing). Workers produce and consume; the elderly consume only. As a result, the mobility decision of workers is driven by both the wage gap and the cost-of-living gap, unlike the elderly who react to the differences in the cost of living only. We show that the return of pre-industrial urban system dominated by rentier cities does not seem to be on the agenda. Quite the opposite, the future of large working-cities is still bright, the reason being that today?s urban costs act as a strong force that prevents a large share of local services and manufacturing firms from following the rentiers in the elderly-cities, while the supply of differentiated b2c services prevent their complete separation.

Keywords: Economic geography; Aging population; Spatial mobility; Sectoral mobility; Commuting costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F16 J60 L13 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP7403 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: AGING NATIONS AND THE FUTURE OF CITIES* (2009)
Working Paper: Aging nations and the future of cities (2009)
Working Paper: Aging nations and the future of cities (2009)
Working Paper: Aging nations and the future of cities (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:7403

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP7403

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().