要旨：Both the term “regional economic integration” and that the economics of integration developed as a sub-branch of international economics are used lavishly in the case of domestic inter-regional analysis in China currently on one hand. While the new economic geography developed as a framework of spatial analysis is flooding the classrooms of economics at major universities in mainland China, on the other hand. Based on the analysis of the peculiarities of the multi-layered regions and deep governmental involvements in both national economy and regional ones extensively, this paper suggests that a clever choice is to combine the both instruments together in analyzing the inter-regional economic relationship of the Chinese economy, considering its complexities and peculiarities being an economy both in the process of institutional transition and industrialization.

要旨：We criticize the theories used to explain the size distribution of cities. They take an empirical fact and work backward to obtain assumptions on primitives. The induced theoretical assumptions on consumer behavior, particularly about their inability to insure against the city-level productivity shocks in the model, are untenable. With either self insurance or insurance markets, and either an arbitrarily small cost of moving or the assumption that consumers do not perfectly observe the shocks to firms' technologies, the agents will never move. Even without these frictions, our analysis yields another equilibrium with insurance where consumers never move. Thus, insurance is a substitute for movement. We propose an alternative class of models, involving extreme risk against which consumers will not insure. Instead, they will move, generating a Frechet distribution of city sizes that is empirically competitive with other models.

【応用ミクロ経済学・産業経済学ワークショップと共催】

要旨：There is increasing empirical evidence that vertical product differentiation is an important determinant of international trade. However, the economic literature so far has solely focused on the case in which quality trade stems from differences between countries. No studies investigate the role of quality trade between similar economies. This paper first develops a simple theoretical trade model that includes vertical product differentiation in a heterogeneous-firm framework. The model yields three main predictions for trade between similar economies. First, exported goods are of higher quality than goods sold on the domestic market. Second, larger economies have on average higher export qualities compared with smaller economies. Third, with increasing trade costs higher quality goods are exchanged. For all three effects, strong empirical support is found using detailed export trade data of the United States and 15 European Union countries.

要旨：This paper aims to address the effects of congestion externalities in a new economic geography context. Our model is the same as the standard CP model except for the assumption that per-unit interregional transport cost depends on total volume of shipped varieties. As a result of the endogeneity of per-unit transport cost, we have some features of agglomeration and dispersion equilibria that are not evident from the standard models. A welfare analysis focuses on a second best problem so that a market still can take a part in generating agglomeration economies. That is, we investigate the relationship between the congestion externalities and the second best unit tax of shipped goods given firm's monopolistic pricing. If skilled workers are nearly agglomerated in one region, the interregional congestion externalities should not be fully internalized regardless of the level of transport technology. In an evenly dispersed economy, however, the second best tax can be larger than the congestion externalities if the level of transport technology is low.

要旨：Using a simple North-South trade model with vertically related markets, we show that a North downstream firm may have an incentive to strategically utilize technology spillovers to a local rival caused by foreign direct investment (FDI). Whether the North firm invests in the South depends on the South firm's capacity to absorb the North technology. FDI arises only if the capacity is medium. Technology spillovers through FDI may benefit all producers and consumers. Our analysis also suggests that very tight intellectual property rights protection in the South may benefit neither the North nor the South, because it "discourages" FDI.

要旨：We construct a framework of endogenous growth and new economic geography models in which industries with vertical linkages grow and agglomerate in a limited number of countries. Using this framework, we consider the outcomes of an R&D subsidy game among countries in the world economy where globalization proceeds. When transaction costs are higher, less industrialized countries are more eager to attract industries with vertical linkages. To prevent the industries from relocating, more industrialized countries choose much higher R&D subsidies. As a result, the industries never relocate and the economy-wide growth rate is very high. When transaction costs decrease, countries are less willing to host industries with vertical linkages. R&D subsidy competition becomes less intensive, and so the industries are more likely to relocate. The economy-wide growth rate fluctuates and decreases on average.