Regular time: 15:15-16:45, Thursday; seminars are given in English.
Finished seminars
December 22 (Thr) Kohei Takeda (National University of Singapore) 15:15–16:45, Place: IER Conference room
Title: The Geography of Structural Transformation: Effects on Inequality and Mobility
Abstract: Economies transform at an uneven pace: San Jose's meteoric rise coexists with Detroit's slow decline. The interplay between structural transformation in the aggregate and local economies is key to understanding spatial inequality and worker mobility. This paper develops a dynamic overlapping generations model of economic geography where historical exposure to different industries creates persistence in occupational structure, and non-homothetic preferences and differential productivity growth lead to different rates of structural transformation. Despite the heterogeneity across locations, sectors, and time, the model remains tractable and is calibrated to match metropolitan area data for the U.S. economy from 1980 to 2010. The calibration allows us to back out measures of upward mobility and inequality, thereby providing theoretical underpinnings to the Gatsby Curve. The counterfactual analysis shows that structural transformation has substantial effects on mobility.
November 17 (Thr) Tomoya Mori (Kyoto U) 15:00-16:30, Place: TBA
"Origin of power laws and their spatial fractal structure for city-size distributions"
(with T. Akamatsu, Y. Takayama & M. Osawa)
Abstract: City-size distributions follow an approximate power law in various countries despite high volatility in relative city sizes over time. Our empirical evidence for the United States indicates that the scaling law stems from a spatial fractal structure owing to the coordination of industrial locations. While the locations of individual industries change considerably over time, there is a persistent pattern in that the localized industries at a given time are found only in larger cities. The spatial organization of cities exhibits a stable hierarchical structure in which larger cities are spaced apart to serve as centers for surrounding smaller cities, generating a recursive pattern across different spatial scales. In our theoretical replication of the observed regularities, diversity in scale economy among industries induces diversity in their location pattern, which translates into diversity in city size via spatial coordination of industries and population. The city-size power law is a generic feature of Monte-Carlo samples of stationary states resulting from the spontaneous spatial fractal structure in the hypothetical economy. The identified regularities reveal constraints on feasible urban planning at each regional scale. The success or failure of place-based policies designed to take advantage of individual cities’ characteristics should depend on their spatial relationships with other cities, subject to the nationwide spatial fractal structure.
October 27 (Thr) Takashi Onoda (JBIC). 15:15-16:45, Place: TBA
"Cities’ Demand-driven Industrial Composition"
Abstract: I report a new stylized fact: large cities specialize in income-elastic sectors. I explain this by developing a model that has heterogeneous income-elasticities and mobile agents. Either heterogeneous fundamental productivities or heterogeneous amenities generate the specialization pattern through the home market effect. The city with fundamentally better productivity or amenity becomes larger, offers a higher wage, and specialize in income-elastic sectors.
October 11 (Tue!) David Weil (Brown) 17:15-18:45! Place: IER conference room
"Land Quality" with J. Vernon Henderson and Adam Storeygard
Abstract: We develop a new measure of land quality by estimating weights in a Poisson regression of grid-cell population on geographic characteristics and country fixed effects. Aggregating to countries, we construct average land quality (ALQ) and quality-adjusted population density (QAPD). We show: First, current income per capita is positively correlated with ALQ. Second, while income today is unrelated to conventional population density, it is strongly negatively related to QAPD. Third, this negative relationship was not present in 1820 and emerged because today’s lower income countries have experienced faster subsequent population growth. Fourth, countries with higher average land quality began sustained modern economic growth earlier, and this earlier takeoff largely explains the modern income-ALQ relationship. We posit a framework in which land quality induced denser populations in Malthusian equilibrium and, via agglomeration, earlier takeoffs. Less dense countries experienced larger population multipliers during their later demographic transitions due to imported health technologies.
July 21 (Thr) Yuki Otsu (University of Tokyo) 15:15-16:45, Place: IER conference room
"Does Visitation in Prison Reduce Recidivism?"
Abstract: Visitation in prison is associated with a low recidivism rate after release, but the causality is not clear. This paper tries to estimate the effect of visitation experience on the recidivism outcome of state prisoners in Missouri, using an instrumental variable approach. The instrumental variable used for identification is the distance from a prison to an address before incarceration. The results support that visitation has a causal effect on recidivism in the short run. Further analysis shows that employment is an important channel of the visitation effect. However, no discernible effect on housing stability is found
June 23 (Thr) Kozo Kiyota (Keio University) 15:15-16:45, Place: IER conference room
"Why Inward FDI is So Low in Japan? An Insight from Machine Learning"
Abstract: Inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in Japan is extremely low compared with other countries. According to UNCTAD (2021, World Investment Report), the ratio of inward FDI stock to GDP in Japan is 4.9% in 2020, which is ranked 198th of 201 countries. Why inward FDI in Japan is so low? In this paper, we employ a machine learning (ML) technique to answer this question, which is new in the analysis of FDI. Our basic framework builds upon the gravity model of bilateral FDI, which has a strong theoretical background. Our innovation is in the selection of the control variables. We employ the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (Lasso) technique, one of the ML regularization techniques, to answer the above research question. The results indicate that, once we control for macroeconomic variables such as government debt, the gravity model predicts well the actual inward FDI in Japan.
June 16 (Thr) Atsushi Yamagishi (Princeton University) 15:15-16:45, Place: IER conference room
"Measuring Discrimination in Spatial Equilibrium: 100 Years of Japan's Invisible Race." with Yasuhiro Sato
Abstract: We propose a novel approach for measuring the cost of belonging to a discriminated group based on land prices and apply it to buraku, the historically discriminated group in Japan. Buraku discrimination is distinctive in that the observed group membership changes according to geography: one is more likely to be regarded as buraku by living in certain areas (buraku areas). We incorporate this feature into a spatial equilibrium model and show that land prices of buraku areas capitalize the overall severeness of discrimination. We then utilize newly-digitized data on land prices for Kyoto spanning from 1912 to 2018 to quantify the severeness of buraku discrimination over more than 100 years. Using a spatial discontinuity design and other identification strategies, we estimate that the land price penalty of buraku areas was 51–56% in 1912 but gradually declined to 12%–18% in 2018. Thus, although buraku discrimination has substantially mitigated, it exhibits strong long-term persistence.
May 26 (Thr) Shuhei Kitamura (Osaka University) 15:15-16:45, Place: IER conference room
"Cities, Conflict, and Corridors" with N.-P. Lagerlöf
In this paper we propose that state structure in European history is linked to how geography affects the effective distance between state capitals. First we document that military battles tend to occur close to the shortest-distance corridors between the capitals of the belligerent powers, *except* where that corridor is intercepted by certain types of geography, specifically seas, mountains, and marshes. Geography thus seems to have influenced the effective military distance between the belligerents’ capitals. Then we explore similar corridors between a multitude of European cities, documenting two patterns: (1) state capitals tend to be closer to each other when the geography between them is more separating, as measured by similar types of geography found to affect battle locations; (2) controlling for distance, the likelihood that any two cities are located in the same state decreases with the same types of geography between them. We present a model consistent with these patterns.