Spatial pricing, optimal location and social welfare with consumer arbitrage

This paper provides a comprehensive comparison of the optimal location, output and welfare of spatial discriminatory pricing by integrating consumer arbitrage into the Hwang and Mai (Am Econ Rev 80:567–575, 1990) model. It shows that the presence of arbitrage creates a significant influence on a firm’s locational choice and thus generates different welfare implications. When the discrepancy between the two markets is small, the optimal location and the resulting social welfare level under discriminatory pricing and mill pricing policies remain the same; however, when the discrepancy between the two markets is large, the two pricing policies yield different optimal locations which make the welfare under discriminatory pricing higher than that under mill pricing, hence reversing the support for anti-trust legislation.     

Spatial mobility and social outcomes

This paper examines the nature and extent of socio-spatial mobility in Great Britain. In contrast with previous studies, we investigate the entire spectrum of moves within and across the hierarchical structure of neighbourhoods. We use data from the British Household Panel Survey to trace moves between neighbourhoods defined using the Indices of Multiple Deprivation. We define upward socio-spatial mobility as moving to neighbourhoods with greater levels of advantage (lower levels of deprivation), and downward socio-spatial mobility as the shift to less advantaged neighbourhoods. As expected, the results show that there are strong associations between origin and destination neighbourhood types. We find that education and income play critical roles in the ability of individuals to make neighbourhood gains when they move. An important finding of the research is the way in which the housing market structurally conditions socio-spatial mobility. In the UK and probably more broadly, the opportunity to move to socially advantaged places is highly stratified by housing tenure.     

Spatial prices,search behavior and location

This paper presents a model that links spatial prices with search behavior and location. Consumers are assumed to search for a product at the lowest overall costs where suppliers are spatially distributed. The expected result of this “shopping decision” is linked with a longer term “quantity decision” relating the customer’s location via bid prices for land with the expected costs of buying the product. We demonstrate various characteristics of this model via numerical simulations.     

Spatial fixed effects and spatial dependence in a single cross‐section

We investigate the common conjecture in applied econometric work that the inclusion of spatial fixed effects in a regression specification for a single cross‐sectional data set removes spatial dependence. We demonstrate analytically and by means of a series of simulation experiments how evidence of the removal of spatial autocorrelation by spatial fixed effects may be spurious when the true data generating processes (DGP) takes the form of a spatial lag or spatial error dependence. In addition, we also show that spatial fixed effects correctly remove spatial correlation only in the special case where the dependence is group‐wise, with all observations in the same group as neighbours of each other.     

Industrial location and policy: A spatial statistical analysis

This paper contains an analysis of factors affecting the movement of mobile industrial establishments from London to other British counties between 1972 and 1981. These factors, including policy instruments, are translated where possible into cost indices, which form the arguments of a multinomial logit model. A range of diagnostic tests is used to improve the specification of this model.     

Consistent price and location conjectures in spatial competition models

Remarkable advances have been made in spatial competition theory during the past three decades. Only in recent years, however, have the implications of firms' conjectural responses become well understood. Here research has largely focused on analyzing markets where prices (short run) or prices and locations (medium and long run) are exogenous. This paper examines the equilibium properties of spatial firms when prices and locations are consistent or endogenous. Price reaction equations are complemented with location reaction equations, consistency conditions are introduced, and numerical solutions are then given. While the simulations are confined to one-dimensional markets, equilibrium solutions unambiguously indicate how prices, locations, and profits are related to the costs of firms, the elasticity of consumer demand, and the presence or absence of market boundaries.     

The centralization index: A measure of local spatial segregation

Segregated areas may occur around an attractive park or a waste incinerator, but the magnitude and group membership of the people in closest proximity will likely be difierent. We therefore introduce a local segregation measure that can be applied to any location within a metropolitan area, and that can identify the group that is relatively more concentrated around that reference location. We further introduce an inference approach to identify the statistical significance of a particular segregation value. In an exploratory setting the index can be used to generate a map of hot spots, and seed the question: “why is this group significantly concentrated around that location?”     

Spatial patterns in the location decisions of US credit unions

Building on central place theory, we offer a series of simple location models for US credit unions. Credit unions are historically viewed as a community-based strategy designed to fill voids in spatial financial markets. Unlike banks and more traditional retail financial institutions, our results show that credit unions operate in areas with a low concentration of retail banks. This suggests that credit unions do not follow the ??herd?? mentality that dominates traditional retail banking institutions. Instead they cluster around common bonds of association. That is credit unions are fundamentally capturing a different market than traditional banks and do not behave in a pro-competitive manner with banks. In the spirit of Bitter et?al. (J Geogr Syst 9:7?C27, 2007), we compare the overall performance of geographically weighted regression with a set of both spatial and non-spatial estimators. We find that the spatial estimators generally performed better than the aspatial estimators, and there is significant spatial heterogeneity in some of the determinants of credit union concentrations. Results on individual variables of interest tend to be stable across the different estimators lending confidence to our hypothesis that credit unions serve niche markets.     

晋中南部大能力铁路通道功能定位及建设意义

根据晋中南地区各煤炭运输通道煤炭运量和功能划分,分析新建山西中南部大能力铁路通道在晋煤外运通道、晋煤下水通道和区域路网中的功能,进而分析项目在国民经济和路网中的意义,以期指导建设方案的优化,进一步控制工程规模和投资。     

Housing segregation and the poor: New trends in French social rented housing

Traditionally, French social housing was housing low‐paid workers with a regular job. The very poor were in private dilapidated housing. Today a new pattern is emerging: the very poor and the deprived are in the most dilapidated fraction of social housing. Far from improving their social integration, dilapidated social housing estates are stigmatizing them. Social tenants are still second‐class citizens.     

Spatial price discrimination and location choice with labor markets

This paper generalizes Hwang and Mai’s (Am Econ Rev 80:567–575, 1990) model to include labor markets and shows that their results are still valid when the difference of inverse demand slopes is large enough, while, when this difference is small, a monopoly firm always chooses the same (boundary) location under different pricing scenarios. In the latter situation, total outputs are identical in different pricing scenarios, while the social welfare under discriminatory pricing is definitely less than that of the mill pricing. Our results are robust, no matter whether the commuting costs are paid by the firm or workers, and no matter whether wages are discriminatory or uniform.     

Spatial location patterns of Spanish manufacturing firms*

In this paper, we evaluate the spatial location patterns of Spanish manufacturing firms in each industry. We use a distance‐based method, Ripley's K function, which allows us to treat space as continuous. With ‘complete spatial randomness’ as benchmark, every sector presents significant concentration whatever the distance considered. If we use the locations of all manufacturing firms as a benchmark, we find dispersion in some sectors and concentration in others, finding also differences in the spatial scale at which clustering occurs. Finally, the use of cities as a benchmark reveals that not only is ‘first nature’ among the location determinants of manufacturing firms but they also include the self‐reinforcing advantages of ‘second nature’. Resumen. En este artículo evaluamos los patrones de localización espacial de empresas de manufacturas en cada industria. Utilizamos un método basado en la distancia, la función K de Ripley, que nos permite tratar el espacio como un continuo. Tomando la ‘aleatoriedad espacial completa’ como cota de referencia, todos los sectores presentan una concentración significativa, independientemente de la distancia considerada. Si empleamos las localizaciones de todas las empresas manufactureras como cota de referencia, encontramos dispersión en algunos sectores y concentración en otros, así como diferencias en la escala espacial a la que ocurre la formación de conglomerados (clusters). Finalmente, el emplear ciudades como cota de referencia revela que entre los determinantes de localización de empresas manufactureras no solo está la ‘primera naturaleza’ sino que también se incluyen las ventajas de retroalimentación positiva de la ‘segunda naturaleza’.      

On the space curve and industrial location

This paper presents a formal mathematical model to investigate the properties and shape of the space cost curve in the Weber-Moses type triangle space. It also examines the theoretical impacts and implications of the space cost curve on the optimum location decisions of the firm. We have shown that the shape of the space cost curve crucially depends upon the marginal transport costs with respect to distances. When the transport rates are constant, the space cost curve may be linear, convex or concave from below in the distant plane. This result is quite different from Smith's (17, 19), Richardson's (13) and Mai's (9). Furthermore, we have shown the convex space cost curve is an important condition for the existence of the optimum intermediate location. This is consistent with Haddah and Schwartzman's empirical study (5).The author is grateful to Professors H. Ohta, C. C. Mai and K. Hohlt for valuable help. Needless to say, any possible errors are due to the author.     

Spatial dependence and heterogeneity in the location processes of new high‐tech firms in Nanjing,China

Drawing upon township‐level data on high‐tech firms of Nanjing, China, this paper adopts a spatial econometric approach to examining the existence of spatial dependence and heterogeneity in the location processes of high‐tech firms. The results show that some locational determinants of neighbouring townships exert significant impacts on the attractiveness of a certain township for high‐tech firms. Besides, the marginal effects of some locational determinants are found to vary across space. In general, these results point to the need to account for both inter‐territorial spillovers and cross‐spatial variance in the investigation of factors that influence high‐tech firm location.