DEVELOPMENT OF AN URBAN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS METHOD THAT CONSIDERS AGGLOMERATION ECONOMIES

Abstract

 This study develops an urban economic analysis method that can assess the long-term effects of social infrastructure developments within a city. To this end, we construct a model that considers agglomeration economies and that can explain the endogenous formation of polycentric urban configurations. We then present an analytical method for efficiently obtaining stable equilibria in the model. Furthermore, to demonstrate the applicability of this analysis method, we conduct a counterfactual analysis on the improvement of commuting costs for the Kanazawa urban employment area. The results show that the population distribution changes reflect the model characteristics.