Monocentric city redux

Jordan Rappaport

No RWP 14-9, Research Working Paper from Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

Abstract: This paper argues that centralized employment remains an empirically relevant stylization of midsize U.S. metros. It extends the monocentric model to explicitly include leisure as a source of utility but constrains workers to supply fixed labor hours. Doing so sharpens the marginal disutility from longer commutes. The numerical implementation calibrates traffic congestion to tightly match observed commute times in Portland, Oregon. The implied geographic distribution of CBD workers' residence tightly matches that of Portland. The implied population density, land price, and house price gradients approximately match empirical estimates. Variations to the baseline calibration build intuition on underlying mechanics.

Keywords: Urban Land Use; Commuting; Leisure; Value of Time (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R12 R14 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2014-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-tre, nep-upt and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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