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THE FIVE AXIOMS OF URBAN ECONOMICS
Urban economics explores the location choices of households and firms, and so it is natural to assume that people and firms are mobile. Of course, people don’t instantly change their workplaces and residences when circumstances change; therefore, a model of perfect mobility tells us more about long-term changes than short-term ones. The average household changes its residence every seven years, meaning that about 14 percent of the population moves every year. Although most models of urban economics assume perfect mobility, there are exceptions, and we will high-light the analysis that assumes less than perfect mobility.In this part of the chapter, we introduce five axioms of urban economics. An axiom is a self-evident truth, something that most people readily understand and accept. For our purposes, “most people” are people who have taken at least one course in economics. The five axioms lie at the heart of urban economics and together provide a foundation for the economic models of location choices. As you go through the book, these five axioms will appear repeatedly.
1. Prices Adjust to Achieve Locational Equilibrium
A locational equilibrium occurs when no one has an incentive to move. Suppose that you and Bud are competing for two rental houses, one along a beautiful beach and one along a noisy highway. If the two houses have the same price (the same monthly rent), you would prefer the beach house, and so would Bud. Flipping a coin and giving the beach house to the winner wouldn’t generate a locational equilibrium because the unlucky person in the highway house would have an incentive to move to the more desirable house.
Locational equilibrium requires a higher price for the beach house. To eliminate the incentive to move, the price of the beach house must be high enough to fully compensate for the better environment. The question is, How much money are you willing to sacrifice to live on the beach? If your answer is $300 and Bud agrees, then the equilibrium price of the beach house will be $300 higher than the price of the highway house. In general, prices adjust to generate the same utility level in different environments, getting people to live in both desirable and undesirable locations.
The same sort of economic forces operate in the labor market. Workers compete for jobs in desirable locations, causing lower wages in more desirable locations. Suppose you are competing with Ricki for two jobs, one in Dullsville and one in Connellsville, a city with a more stimulating social environment. If a $500 gap in the monthly wage fully compensates for the difference in the social environment, the equilibrium wage will be $500 lower in Coolsville. The two workers will be indifferent between the two cities because a move to Coolsville means a $500 wage cut. In the labor market, wages adjust to get people to work in both desirable and undesirable environments.
The price of land also adjusts to ensure locational equilibrium among firms. Office firms compete for the most accessible land in a city, and land at the center is the most accessible and thus the most expensive. In equilibrium, office firms on less accessible land far from the center pay lower prices for land, and can be just as profitable as firms on the most accessible land.
2. Self-Reinforcing Effects Generate Extreme Outcomes
A self-reinforcing effect is a change in something that leads to additional changes in the same direction. Consider a city where the sellers of new automobiles are initially spread evenly throughout the city. If one seller relocates next to another seller on Auto Road, what happens next? Auto consumers compare brands before buying, and the pair of sellers on Auto Road will facilitate comparison shopping and thus attract buyers. The increased consumer traffic on Auto Road will make it an attractive site for other auto sellers, so they will move too. The ultimate result is an “auto row,” a cluster of firms that compete against one another, yet locate nearby.
Self-reinforcing changes also happen in the location decisions of people. Suppose artists and creative types are initially spread out evenly across a dozen cities in a region. If by chance one city experiences an influx of artists, its creative environment will improve as artists (1) are exposed to more ideas and fabrication techniques and (2) can share studios, print shops, tool suppliers, and other facilities. The cluster of artists will attract other artists from the region, causing a concentration of artistic production in one city. In recent decades, cities that have attracted artists and creative folks have experienced relatively rapid growth (Florida, 2002).
3. Externalizes Cause Inefficiency
In most transactions, the costs and benefits of the exchange are confined to the individual buyer and seller. The consumer pays a price equal to the full cost of producing the good, so no one else bears a cost from the transaction. Similarly, the consumer is the only person to benefit from the product. In contrast, an externalize occurs when some of the costs or benefits of a transaction are experienced by someone other than the buyer or seller, that is, someone external to the transaction.
An external cost occurs when a consumer pays a price that is less than the full cost of producing a product. The price of a product always includes the costs of the labor, capital, and raw materials used to produce the product, but it usually does not include the environmental costs of producing the product. For example, if burning gasoline in automobiles generates air pollution, part of the cost of driving is borne by people who breathe dirty air. Similarly, when you enter a crowded highway, you slow down everyone else, meaning that other drivers bear a cost.
An external benefit occurs when a product purchased by one person generates a benefit for someone else. For example, painting my peeling house improves the appearance of my neighborhood, increasing the value of my neighbor’s house as well as mine. Education generates external benefits because it improves communication and thinking skills, making a person a better team worker. In other words, some of the benefits of education are experienced by a person’s fellow workers, who become more productive and thus earn higher wages.
When there are external costs or benefits, we do not expect the market equilibrium to be socially efficient. In the case of external cost, people pay less than the full social cost of an action like driving, so they drive too much. In the case of external benefit, people get less than the full social benefit from an action like education, so they stop short of the socially efficient level of education. As we’ll see later in the book, cities have all sorts of external costs and benefits. In many cases there is a simple solution: Internalize the externalize with a tax or a subsidy, and let individuals, who then bear the full social cost and benefits of their actions, decide what to do.
4. Production Is Subject to Economies of Scale
Economies of scale occur when the average cost of production decreases as output increases. For most products, if we start with a relatively small production operation and double all inputs, the average cost of production decreases. In the jargon of economics, when the long-run average cost curve is negatively sloped, we say that there are scale economies in production. Scale economies occur for two reasons:
Some capital inputs are “lumpy” and cannot be scaled down for small operations. As a result, a small operation has the same indivisible inputs as a large operation. For example, to manufacture frisbees you need a mold, whether you produce one frisbee per day or a thousand. Similarly, to produce microprocessors you need a clean room and other expensive equipment, whether you produce one processor per day or a thousand. As output increases, the average cost decreases because the cost of the indivisible input is spread over more output.
The extent of scale economies in production varies across products. Micropro- cessors are produced in $5 billion fabrication facilities with a highly specialized workforce performing hundreds of complex tasks, resulting in large scale economies in production. In contrast, pizza is produced with a $5,000 pizza oven with just a few production tasks, so scale economies are exhausted sooner. In general, the extent of scale economies is determined by the lumpiness of indivisible inputs and the opportunities for factor specialization.
5. Competition Generates Zero Economic Profit
When there are no restrictions on the entry of firms into a market, we expect firms to enter the market until economic profit is zero. Recall that economic profit equals the excess of total revenue over total economic cost, where economic cost includes the opportunity costs of all inputs. Two key components of economic costs are the opportunity cost of the entrepreneur’s time and the opportunity cost of funds invested in the firm. For example, suppose an entrepreneur could earn $60,000 in another job and invests $100,000 in the firm, taking the money out of a mutual fund that earns 8 percent. The economic cost of the firm includes $60,000 in time cost and $8,000 in investment cost. Once we account for all the opportunity costs, the fact that economic profit is zero means that a firm is making enough money to stay in business, but not enough for other firms to enter the market. Earning zero economic profit means earning “normal” accounting profit.
In urban economics, competition has a spatial dimension. Each firm enters the market at some location, and the profit of each firm is affected by the locations of other firms. Spatial competition looks a lot like monopolistic competition, a market structure in which firms sell slightly differentiated products in an environment of unrestricted entry. Although this sounds like an oxymoron such as “tight slacks” and “jumbo shrimp,” the words are revealing. Each firm has a monopoly for its differentiated product, but unrestricted entry leads to keen competition for consumers who can easily switch from one differentiated product to another. With spatial competition, each firm has a local monopoly in the area immediately surrounding its establishment, but unrestricted entry leads to keen competition. Firms will continue to enter the market until economic profit drops to zero.
WHY DO CITIES EXIST?
Cities exist because human technology has created systems of production and exchange that seem to defy the natural order. Three conditions must be satisfied for a city to develop.
1. Agricultural surplus.
People outside cities must produce enough food to feed themselves and city dwellers.
2. Urban production.
City dwellers must produce something—goods or services—to exchange for food grown by rural workers.
3. Transportation for exchange.
There must be an efficient transportation system to facilitate the exchange of food and urban products. Over this period, the urban share increased from 6 percent to 82 percent, a remarkable transformation that also occurred in other parts of the world. As we’ll see in the next three chapters of the book, the transformation of a rural society into an urban one occurred because technological advances increased the agricultural surplus (condition 1), increased the productivity of urban workers (condition2), and increased the efficiency of transportation and exchange (condition 3). with projections for the year 2030. In 1950, urbanization rates were relatively low in Africa and Asia, and highest in Oceania and North America. Between now and the year 2030, urbanization rates are expected to increase everywhere, with the largest increases in Africa and Asia. For the world as a whole, the urbanization rate was 30 percent in 1950 and is expected to double by the year 2030.
The New York area tops the list, followed by Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and Philadelphia. The third column shows the percentage growth of each metropolitan area over the period 2000 to 2005. The most rapidly growing metropolitan areas were in the South, the Mountain States, and the West. In three metro- politan areas—Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland—population decreased over this period, continuing a two-decade trend of decreasing population. These metropolitan areas experienced large losses in manufacturing employment.
The table shows actual populations in 1975 and 2005, and projected populations for the year 2015. Eight metropolitan areas, all of which are in the developing world, are expected to grow by at least 20 percent over the 10-year period. In contrast, three cities in the developed world (Tokyo, Osaka, and Paris) are expected to grow slowly. In the United States, New York is expected to grow 6 percent over the period, and Los Angeles is expected to grow 7 percent.
In 1970, the two types of regions had roughly the same number of large cities. By 1996, however, the number of large cities in the less developed regions nearly doubled, and by 2015 there will be roughly four times as many large cities in less developed regions.
WHAT IS A CITY?
An urban economist defines an urban area as a geographical area that contains a large number of people in a relatively small area. In other words, an urban area has a population density that is high relative to the density of the surrounding area. This definition accommodates urban areas of vastly different sizes, from a small town to a large metropolitan area. The definition is based on population density because an essential feature of an urban economy is frequent contact between different economic activities, which is feasible only if firms and households are concentrated in a relatively small area. The U.S. Census Bureau has developed a variety of geographical definitions relevant to urban economics. Since much of the empirical work in urban economics is based on census data, a clear understanding of these definitions is important. The appendix to this chapter provides the details of the census definitions. The key census definitions, some of which are new for the 2000 Census, are as follows.1. Urban area:
A densely settled geographical area with a minimum population of 2,500 people and a minimum density of 500 people per square mile. In 2000, there were 3,756 urban areas in the United States.
2. Urban population:
People living in urban areas. In 2000, the urban population was 79 percent of the total population.
3. Metropolitan area:
A core area with a substantial population nucleus, together with adjacent communities that are integrated, in an economic sense, with the core area. To qualify as a metropolitan area, the minimum population is 50,000 people. In 2000, there were 361 metropolitan statistical areas in the United States.
4. Metropolitan area: A smaller version of a metropolitan area with a concentration of 10,000 to 50,000 people. In 2000, there were 559 micropolitan statistical areas in the United States.
5. Principal city:
The largest municipality in each metropolitan or micropolitan statistical area. A municipality is defined as an area over which a municipal corporation exercises political authority and provides local government services such as sewage service, crime protection, and fire protection. This book uses three terms to refer to spatial concentrations of economic activity: urban area, metropolitan area, and city . These three terms, which will be used interchangeably, refer to the economic city (an area with a relatively high population density that contains a set of closely related activities), not the political city. When referring to a political city, we will use the term central city or municipality .
WHAT IS URBAN ECONOMICS?
Urban economics can be divided into six related areas that correspond to the six parts.
1. Market forces in the development of cities.
The interurban location decisions of firms and households generate cities of different size and economic structure. We explore the issues of why cities exist and why there are big cities and small ones.
2. Land use within cities.
The interurban location decisions of firms and house- holds generate urban land-use patterns. In modern cities, employment is spread throughout the metropolitan area, in sharp contrast to the highly centralized cities of just 100 years ago. We explore the economic forces behind the change from centralized to decentralized cities. We also use a model of neighborhood choice to explore the issue of segregation with respect to race, income, and educational level.
3. Urban transportation.
We explore some possible solutions to the urban congestion problem and look at the role of mass transit in the urban transportation system. One issue is whether a bus system is more efficient than a light-rail system or a heavy-rail system like BART (San Francisco) or Metro (Washington).
4. Crime and public policy.
We look at the problem of urban crime and show the links between crime and two other urban problems, poverty and low educational achievement.
5. Housing and public policy.
Housing choices are linked to location choices because housing is immobile. We’ll discuss why housing is different from other products and how housing policies work.
6. Local government expenditures and taxes.
Under our fragmented system of local government, most large metropolitan areas have dozens of local governments, including municipalities, school districts, and special districts. In making location choices, households consider the mix of taxes and local public goods.