On the sustainability of a monocentric city : lower transport costs from new transport facilities

This paper proposes a general equilibrium model of a monocentric city based on Fujita and Krugman (1995). Two rates of transport costs per distance and for the same good are introduced. The model assumes that lower transport costs are available at a few points on a line. These lower costs represent new transport facilities, such as high-speed motorways and railways. Findings is that new transport facilities connecting the city and hinterlands strengthen the lock-in effects, which describes whether a city remains where it is forever after being created. Furthermore, the effect intensifies with better agricultural technologies and a larger population in the economy. The relationship between indirect utility and population size has an inverted U-shape, even if new transport facilities are used. However, the population size that maximizes indirect utility is smaller than that found in Fujita and Krugman (1995).

Rural to Urban Migration: A District Level Analysis for India

Based on the recent census data this paper analyses the district level rural to urban migration rates (both intra-state and the inter-state) among males and females separately. Both the rates are closely associated irrespective of whether the migrants originate from the rural areas within the state or outside the state. This would suggest that women usually migrate as accompanists of the males. Though many of the relatively poor and backward states actually show large population mobility, which is primarily in search of a livelihood, the mobility of male population is also seen to be prominent in the relatively advanced states like Maharashtra and Gujarat. Rapid migration of rural females within the boundaries of the states is, however, evident across most of the regions. The social networks, which play an important role in the context of migration are prevalent among the short distance migrants and tend to lose their significance with a rise in the distance between the place of origin and destination though there are some exceptions to this phenomenon. Besides the north-south divide in the Indian context is indeed a significant phenomenon with a few exceptions of metropolitan cities. As regards the effect of factors at the place of destination, prospects for better job opportunities are a major determinant of male migration. Low castes and minority groups tend to pull migration through network effects. Among females also these effects are evident though with the inclusion of the male migration rate they become less significant. Finally the paper brings out the policy implications.

Simulating heterogeneous multinational firms

This paper develops a micro-simulation framework for multinational entry and sales activities across countries. The model is based on Eaton, Kortum, and Kramarz's (2010) quantitative trade model adapted towards multinational production. Using micro data on Japanese manufacturing firms, we first stylize the empirical regularities of multinational entry and sales activity and estimate the model's structural parameters with simulated method of moments. We then demonstrate that our adapted model is able to replicate important dimensions of the in-sample moments conditioned in our estimation strategy. Importantly, it is able to replicate activity under an economic period with a far different level of FDI barriers than was conditioned upon in our estimation sample. Overall, our research highlights the richness of the simulation framework for performing counterfactual analysis of various FDI policies.