《発表論文》

要旨：Older people are less mobile than young people are. Population aging thus means more people would be trapped in locations affected by a shock, preventing the economy from smoothing out spatial differences in labor market outcomes. However, the existence of a large share of immobile workers may mitigate their welfare effects by delaying the capital supply adjustment that would be caused by a flow of workers. In order to study how population aging affects the welfare effects of a local shock, this paper develops a dynamic spatial specific-factor model with demographics that change dynamically depending on fertility rates. Individuals decide where to live and whether to work. Their choices vary over the life cycle because the expected working lifetime and fundamentals (e.g., mobility costs) vary with demographic factors. Hence, aggregate labor adjustment depends on the economy’s age structure. Forward-looking landlords accumulate location-specific capital, and the dynamics of labor and capital interact with each other. I apply the model to Japan and find that population aging can mitigate the welfare loss of workers in a location affected by a negative shock.

要旨：This paper theoretically investigates the relationship between costs for telework and the location of firms and households in a city. I extend the model of Ogawa and Fujita (1980) by introducing two types of companies with different technologies; one is teleworking company hiring more teleworkers and the other is an office company hiring more on-site workers. Only on-site workers conduct face-to-face communication with other firms and incur communication costs.  This paper shows that (i) when telework cost decreases, the first teleworking companies appear in either of two candidate locations: the edge of the existing central business districts (called CBD fringe) or the edge of the residential districts (called urban fringe). If face-to-face communication cost is high, and commuting cost and the ratio of labor input for teleworkers in telework companies are low, then the first telework company is located at the CBD fringe;  otherwise at the urban fringe. (ii) When the telework cost further decreases, the number of telework companies, wage, and welfare increase. In contrast, bid rent and city boundaries decrease. Former empirical researches showed different evidence for the location of primary telework companies; one is nearby CBD and the other is in the suburban area. However, this is the first paper to demonstrate both results in a model and to show the difference depends on the several key parameters: face-to-face communication cost, commuting cost, and the ratio of labor input for teleworkers in telework companies.