要旨：This study contributes to the literature on the relationship between geographical and relation-based distances of economic agents. We aim to estimate the causal effect of firm’s position in the inter-firm transaction network on its spatial location within a city. Using micro data of inter-firm financial transactions for non-retail firms in Kure, a medium-sized Japanese city, we demonstrate that the more central firms in transaction networks tend to have smaller inter-firm distances and therefore to locate at more accessible places within the city. We estimate that one standard deviation increase in PageRank network centrality implies a decrease of 0.154 standard deviation in the interfirm distance (about 457 meters).

【応用ミクロ経済学セミナーと共催】

【応用ミクロ経済学セミナーと共催】

要旨：Owing to a lack of statistics about gasoline prices at the gasoline stand (GS) level in Japan, there are hardly any studies attempting to identify the factors that influence the retail gasoline prices of each GS. We believe that this is the first attempt to tackle this problem. Using the fairly large spatiotemporal dataset of gasoline prices from 2008 to 2012, we estimate an empirical model of spatial competition among retail GSs. The theory of spatial competition suggests that retail gasoline price is affected by cost, demand, and spatial competition; therefore, these three factors are considered in our empirical analyses. For the first two factors, we introduce various types of spatially fine GIS data, including land prices (cost), population density (demand), etc., and their impacts are statistically verified. The spatial competition factor is considered by employing the latest spatial econometrics/social interaction models, in which spatial price completion can be modeled fairly directly.