Labor Specialization and City Formation

Marcus Berliant and Yves Zenou

No 1995008, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: The aim of the paper is to explore the formation of cities through labor specialization, gains to trade, a fixed cost for the transportation network, imperfect competition between firms and the commuting costs of consumers. The model uses a very general setting, allowing a multidimensional location space and multiple firms using different types of labor to produce different outputs. Locations of all agents are endogenous as are prices and quantities. Firms playa Nash location game among themselves, anticipating the locations of consumers, but taking prices as given. Within this framework, we characterize the spatial configuration of firms in equilibrium. Whether or not equilibrium exists and whether or not it is locally unique depend crucially on the relative numbers of outputs, types of labor and firms. Finally, both welfare theorems fail in this model.

Date: 1995-01-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://sites.uclouvain.be/core/publications/coredp/coredp1995.html (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Labour Specialization and City Formation (1995)
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:cor:louvco:1995008

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) Voie du Roman Pays 34, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alain GILLIS ().