Many sources of urban agglomeration involve departures from the first-best world. By modeling the microstructure of agglomeration economies, we derive second-best benefit evaluation formulae for urban transportation improvements. Previous work has investigated the same problem, but without...

Modeling a micro-structure of agglomeration economies, this article derives a second-best benefit evaluation formula for urban transportation improvements. Without explicitly modeling the sources of agglomeration economies, Venables (JTEP 2007) investigated the same problem. This article...

Many sources of urban agglomeration, such as the gains from variety, better matching, and knowledge creation and diffusion, involve departures from the first-best world. Benefit evaluation of a transportation project must then take into account changes in excess burden along with any direct user...

In this chapter we look at the spatial distribution of economic activities in China and Japan. Japan has excellent data and relatively uniform institutions since World War II, which allow us to track its spatial evolution and detail its key features today. For Japan we show how structural shifts...