Regional and Urban Economics最新文献

Most general equilibrium models — both dynamic and static — lack the spatial dimension. There is however a small number of exceptions — the general equilibrium models of Lefeber (1958). Mills (1970) and Koopmans-Beckman (1957) are examples ordered in increasing degree of complexity in assumptions made. It is the aim of this paper to relax some of the simplifying assumptions made in the previously mentioned spatial models in order to analyze the consequences for the solvability.

The first question posed is about the existence of solutions to more general spatial models. The second question concentrates on the implementation aspect of primal solutions to spatial models. The third question concerns the problem of an optimal number of firms. The theoretical discussion is followed by a numerical example. Operational conclusions are presented.

A multistage method for coordinating sectoral and regional plans with fixed targets and limited regional resources is presented. Results of an application are discussed.

Hypotheses, models and decisional algorithms are developed for cases where location decisions involve oligopolistic interdependence. The implications of leader-follower situations are studied, with a view to closing the chain of interdependences.

The impact of scientific and technical change on location and on the spatial structure generally poses a number of challenging theoretical problems and raises some momentous policy problems, because technical change is one of the main engines of economic growth, and rapid technical change and persistent economic growth are characteristics of our times. It is the purpose of this paper to analyze some of the theoretical implications of technological change on the location of economic activities to compare the findings with actual developments.

This paper may be divided into three sections. Firstly the hypothesis of the existence of groups of similar towns is discussed. Secondly a method of determination of these groups is suggested. Finally this methodology is used to test the hypothesis in respect of data on Irish towns.

The regional scientist and the practitioners' concern with infrastructure as an important and possibly decisive element in regional development is increasingly growing. Most of the still rare empirical studies deal with specific types of infrastructure equipments such as water management or communication systems. Theoretical insight, on the contrary, suggests a specific importance of certain ‘bundles’ of infrastructure equipments. However, an empirical basis of such arguing is still missing.

The present paper describes the approach and some first results of a broadly conceived test of complex bundles of infrastructure equipments. The data were collected for 64 supposedly rather homogeneous rural countries of Western Germany and processed by factor analytical methods.

The influence of market forces, access costs and public finance on city size is studied. Extensions of the basic model are considered.

Projections for detailed industry branches are obtained by means of different possible models. Their relative efficiency is submitted to various tests.

This paper reports some experiments testing the efficacy of linear programming (LP) as a method for predicting flows of commodities between regions of Great Britain.

‘Transportation problem’ solutions were found for the annual movement by road of eleven commodity categories between 78 origin and destination zones in 1964. Road distances were used as a surrogate for freight costs. Data on actual flows of these commodities in that year were available for comparison. For the more homogeneous commodity classes the LP solutions replicated the actual pattern quite well.

Another experiment was carried out using the same commodities, on a subset of zones which were more homogeneous with respect to areal extent - namely the 24 major cities in Great Britain: the correspondence between LP solutions and actual flows was much closer than for all 78 zones.

A further test involved finding LP solutions for total road plus rail traffic with six commodities which might be described as ‘heavy’ and which use the rail system extensively. These solutions for total flows proved to correlate with actual flows better than solutions for road movements alone.

These results would appear to justify continuation of investigations of this kind using a finer commodity - and if possible zonal - breakdown. It is hoped that data on actual flows for 1967/68, which have a more disaggregated commodity classification, will be available soon.

The ‘shadow prices’ of the minimizing dual of the transportation problem were produced and examined to see if they made sense in terms of notions of geographical comparative cost advantage variations for production and consumption.