Spatial frictions

Arbeitspapier

The world is replete with spatial frictions. Shipping goods across cities entails trade frictions. Commuting within cities causes urban frictions. How important are these frictions in shaping the spatial economy? We develop and quantify a novel framework to address this question at three different levels: Do spatial frictions matter for the city-size distribution? Do they affect individual city sizes? Do they contribute to the productivity advantage of large cities and the toughness of competition in cities? The short answers are: no; yes; and it depends.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 7175

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation ; Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity
• Subject: trade frictions ; urban frictions ; city-size distribution ; productivity ; markups

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Behrens, Kristian ; Mion, Giordano ; Murata, Yasusada ; Suedekum, Jens
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2013

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/69472
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET