要旨：This paper studies the conditions for the consolidation of political jurisdictions. We focus on the tradeoff between the scale merit and the heterogeneity of preference among residents. That is, large jurisdictions enjoy the benefit of scale but must incur the cost due to the increment of heterogeneity among their populations. In addition to this, the land public ownership yields the strategic interaction: the agreement of the consolidation of some towns induce the consolidation of remaining towns. Our model implies that i) the consolidation might be too much observed under the decentralized regime; ii) observed number of the consolidation might be inefficiently large.

要旨：We construct a framework in which public infrastructures that reduce transportation costs are explicitly introduced in new economic geography models in which the sectors with vertical linkages are concentrated in a limited number of countries. Using this framework, we consider the outcome of the public-infrastructure-provision games by welfare-maximizing governments. In the model, a pure strategy Nash equilibrium does not necessarily exist. We show that there exists a mixed strategy Nash equilibrium in which the public infrastructure investments by a country lacking a sector with vertical linkage have much larger variance than those by a country hosting the sector. The less industrialized country has the incentive to outlay tremendous amounts of public infrastructure investment to attract the sector within its own borders. Consequently, the relocation of an industry with vertical linkage can occur with a small but definitely positive probability.

要旨：In East Asia, international production/distribution networks have developed and have explosively increased intra-regional trade particularly in intermediate goods. This paper examines whether home bias for intermediate goods gets smaller than that for finished goods in the 1990s. Our findings are summarized as follows. First, differences in location advantages, for which we use differences in per capita GDP as a proxy, are more effectively utilized in intermediate goods transactions. Second, the home bias for intermediate goods has been at the same level as that for finished goods. Particularly in 1995, the home bias in all countries is not smaller for intermediate goods than for finished goods.

要旨：This paper investigates the changing geographical pattern of manufacturing industries in Japan between 1985 and 1995 and explores factors of their geographic concentration. A regression analysis is conducted to test some hypotheses that are derived directly from early models of the New Economic Geography (NEG). Regression results indicate that the geographic concentration of Japanese manufacturing industries seems to be determined by some combination of internal economies of scale, transportation costs, and factor intensity. However, inter-industry linkages are found to be an insignificant factor of geographic concentration. As posited by the NEG theories, Japanese manufacturing industries with larger internal economies of scale and smaller unit transportation costs tend to have a higher level of geographic concentration. Japanese manufacturing data also support the Heckscher-Ohlin theory: labor- or capital-intensive industries tend to have a higher level of geographic concentration.

要旨：本稿は高所得者が商品住宅を消費し、低所得者が「経済適用性住宅」を消費する中国の持家制度に基づいて理論モデルを構築する。比較静学分析と政策評価シミュレーション分析によって、中国の持家政策が社会厚生、都市空間構造などに与える影響を評価する。分析の結果、１）高所得者の所得増加は都市境界を拡大させ、2）都市内側境界の地代が上昇すると都市内側地代は上昇し都市境界は縮小し、3）適量の「経済適用性住宅」を供給すると高、低所得者の住宅消費は改善され社会厚生は上昇する。

要旨：Tiebout hypothesis (residential choice depends solely on local public goods) is extensively applied to explain geographic segregation. However, Rhode and Strumpf (2003) find that the Tiebout hypothesis is inconsistent with the long-period empirical data, and therefore a non-Tiebout explanation is needed. This paper provides such an explanation based on the new economic geography framework, into which the heterogeneous preferences of mobile workers on private goods instead of public goods are incorporated. Specifically, two types of mobile workers have different preferences on the products of two industries in the manufacturing sector in a symmetric way. The rigorous general equilibrium analysis conducted here shows that the increasing-returns technology and monopolistic competition form a mechanism endogenously leading to persistent residential segregation. There is an evolving path with decreasing transport costs, in which the two types of mobile workers are segregated, while two industries evolve from dispersion to agglomeration.

要旨：This paper presents a model of economic geography with overlapping generations. Individuals are assumed to decide their location by considering not only where to sell their products when young but also where to buy others’ products when old. The present generation is thus linked to the past generation by a ‘dynamic’ wage equation and to the future generation by an ‘expected’ price index. Such intergenerational linkages induce a strong dispersion force, i.e., without any conventional dispersion force, a symmetric steady state is stable even in the presence of product diversity. Symmetry breaks when the discount factor is sufficiently small. This implies that once intergenerational linkages are taken into account, consumers care about how many varieties are available at which stage of a life cycle. Specifically, the model illustrates the case in which ex ante identical agents in the same generation may be divided into ‘ants’ and ‘grasshoppers’, i.e., those who earn a higher lifetime income and enjoy greater product diversity when old, and those who earn a lower lifetime income and enjoy greater product diversity when young. Finally, the model also suggests a definition of dynamic efficiency of agglomeration and dispersion.

要旨：Openness of economy may or may not accelerate decentralization. We setup a new formal model which captures the essence of the nexus of openness and decentralization where interaction between openness and regional disparity is highlighted. We then empirically examine the effects of openness on decentralization, and especially, validate propositions implied by our theoretical analysis.

要旨：This study explores the antecedents of the spatial variation in market entry rates and extends the density dependence model by relaxing its assumption regarding firm heterogeneity. We argue that market entry is an outcome of new entrants' efforts to resolve competition and uncertainty problems, we theorize and demonstrate interrelatedness between organizational density and market crowding. Using panel data from the Tokyo hotel industry, our analysis not only supports the density dependence model and builds on it by demonstrating that new market entry is more likely to occur when market crowding is low and density is high or density is low and crowding is high.