THE CORE-PERIPHERY MODEL: EXISTENCE AND UNIQUENESS OF SHORT-RUN EQUILIBRIUM

We consider the core-periphery model by Krugman (1991). The nature and stability of the possible steady states of the model have been made progressively precise, see Fujita et al. (1999) and Baldwin et al. (2003). In that model as well as in all the new economic geography models that have been derived from it, the short-run (instantaneous) equilibrium is implicitly determined by the current labor distribution across regions. The numerical computations used so far to determine the short-run equilibrium, tend to suggest its existence. In this work, an existence and uniqueness proof of short-run equilibrium is provided.