期刊名称：CORE Discussion Papers / Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (UCL), Louvain
出版年度：2008
卷号：1
出版社：Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (UCL), Louvain
摘要：We investigate the role of the transport sector in structuring the location of economic activity
within two-region economic geography models of the footloose capital and core-periphery
types. In our setting, competitive carriers offer transport services for shipping manufactured
goods across regions and freight rates are determined endogenously to clear transport markets.
Each carrier commits to the maximum capacity for a round-trip and thus faces a simple
logistic problem: there are costs associated with 'returning empty', and those costs increase the
freight rates charged to manufacturing firms. Since demand for transport services depends on
the spatial distribution of economic activity, agglomeration in one region raises freight rates to
serve foreign markets, thus generating an additional dispersion force. We show that a more
equal equilibrium distribution of firms prevails when freight rates are endogenously
determined than when they are exogenous and that multiple equilibria (including partial
agglomeration) usually coexist.
