| Summary: | 博士 === 國立臺北大學 === 都市計劃研究所 === 101 === This dissertation includes three essays on economic geography. Chapter 2 (the first essay) entitled “Spatial Agglomeration and Dispersion: Revisiting the Helpman Model” presents a modified Helpman model (1998) with an added tradable agriculture good, and modifies the manufacturing production function according to Forslid and Ottaviano (2003) to identify all possible spatial configurations of a two-region economy. This study clearly shows that: (1) The full-agglomeration equilibrium does not exist in this model; (2) The symmetric distribution is a persistent equilibrium as Forslid and Ottaviano (2003); (3) There exist at most two interior solutions of trade freeness with respect to stability of the symmetric distribution, i.e. one break point and two break point solutions; (4) Dispersion black hole exists if substitution elasticity between different manufactured goods is sufficiently large; (5) Increase in trade freeness eventually results in an even spatial dispersion. Moreover, the current work neatly separates the four spatial shaping effects: market size effect, market crowding effect, cost of living effect, and urban congestion effect, and diagrammatically exposes how these forces shape spatial configurations as the degree of trade freeness increases.
Chapter 3 (the second essay) entitled “The Price Effect on Spatial Structure: Revisiting the New Economic Geography Model” adds a factor of production, land, to the standard core-periphery model of the New Economic Geography (NEG) to analyze the effect of land rent on the price index and spatial structure. The result indicates that when production of the manufacturing sector has high dependence on land, and high demand elasticity for differentiated goods, the price index of the core region is higher than that of the periphery, and that the price index could rise with a degree of agglomeration. Meanwhile, the market forces cannot generate a core-periphery structure, which indicates the significance of the price effect on spatial structure.
Chapter 4 (the third essay) entitled “Agglomeration, Tax, and Local Public Goods” explores the interaction between taxation and a local public good (LPG) to see how it impacts the spatial pattern in the framework of NEG. In the benchmark case of a pure LPG, the system displays a similar location pattern to the existing NEG taxation model, although the tax reduces the market size of manufactured goods. However, when we consider the inherent congestion of an LPG, we find a new agglomeration force due to the demand of the LPG and a new dispersion force due to its congestion. As a result of their interaction, the congestability is crucial in determining the spatial location pattern.
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