Urban interactions and spatial structure

Robert Helsley and William Strange

Journal of Economic Geography, 2007, vol. 7, issue 2, 119-138

Abstract: This article specifies and solves a model of endogenous spatial interactions where agents choose to visit a particular location to interact with others. Equilibrium fails to achieve first-best levels of visits and population density. A construction subsidy can restore second-best efficiency, but not first-best because it does not operate on the visit margin directly. A transportation subsidy can achieve first best. This result--which contrasts with earlier work--comes from treating interaction as a choice variable, rather than focusing on population density, a correlate. Developers are unable to implement even second-best efficiency because of their limited control over a city's land area. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeg/lbl027 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:oup:jecgeo:v:7:y:2007:i:2:p:119-138

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Geography is currently edited by Jorge De la Roca, Stephen Gibbons, Simona Iammarino, Amanda Ross and James Faulconbridge

More articles in Journal of Economic Geography from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().