{"id":{"repo_id":"buffalo","oai_identifier":"oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/79336"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/buffalo/oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/79336","repository":{"repo_id":"buffalo","name":"Buffalo","base_url":"https://ubir.buffalo.edu/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Fiscal Transfers in Optimal Spatial Economies with Urban-Rural and Intercity Trade","abstract":"Ph.D.","abstract_html":"Ph.D.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Nguyen, Nguyen Thi Binh"],"institution":"State University of New York at Buffalo","degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Anas, Alex","Economics"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2019,"date_issued":"2019-04-04T20:30:28Z","date_published":"2019-04-04T20:30:28Z","updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:05:14Z","subjects":["economics"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/10477/79336","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Anas, Alex","Economics"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Nguyen, Nguyen Thi Binh"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2019-04-04T20:30:28Z","2019","2018-10-15 21:49:43"]},{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["State University of New York at Buffalo"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Text","Dissertation"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["economics"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/10477/79336"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Ph.D.","This dissertation consists of three essays that study different issues in urban economics.In the first essay, we study a spatial economy with an urban region consisting of a number of identical cities where an urban good is produced and a separate rural region where food is produced. The total population and land area of this economy are fixed. Migration between the two regions can take place until residents, regardless of where they live, have the same level of utility, called the equilibrium utility. A central planner would choose the optimal number of cities as well as how big each city should be in order to maximize the equilibrium utility. Residents immigrate to cities because cities have public goods (healthcare, education, etc.) which they value. Besides examining whether the Henry George Theorem, named after the famous 19th century U.S. political economist Henry George,holds in this setup, the first essay also answers a few other important questions. Among them is the effect of migration on food prices. Under the assumptions of fixed land area and population, when residents move to cities to enjoy public goods, we have less labor and land for food production. As a result, the rural wage and land rent tend to increase. Will this create a pressure to increase food prices? Our numerical simulations show that bigger cities and a higher percentage of urban population (i.e., urbanization) do not necessarily lead to an increase in food prices. Another interesting result is about fiscal transfers between the two regions. More specifically, when public goods are provided in both urban and rural regions, the urban region subsidizes the rural region. Comparative static analysis is used to test the effects of changes in commuting cost, technology, preferences, and population on the structure of this economy.The second essay incorporates the Dixie-Stiglitz model of product differentiation into a spatial urban economy. We first examine the effects of costly intercity trade on the optimal structure of a spatial urban economy; i.e., the optimal number of cities and the optimal size of each city. In this model, we assume that the trading cost between any pair of cities in the system is the same. Under this assumption, we find that when the total population is endogenous, the optimized utility level increases with the number of cities because this allows more varieties to become available. When the total population is fixed, the optimal city size is smaller as compared to the endogenous population case. In the second part of this essay, we introduce a rural region with an agricultural sector into a system of identical cities producing differentiated manufactures. Even though this economy has a fixed population and land area, the optimal size of each city is exactly the same as in the case of endogenous population. This result is intuitive since we still optimize the utility level of a representative resident with respect to the total urban population in this new model. Comparative static analysis confirms the conclusions of the first essay about the relationship between a higher percentage of urban population and food prices.The third and last essay focuses on a system of cities that trade with each other. By relaxing the assumption of identical trading cost for any pair of cities, the optimal city sizes in the equilibrium are different and this provides a more realistic picture of the real world.In the real world, cities cannot emerge at any location but are restricted by geographical conditions (terrain, mountains, rivers, etc.). Taking this fact into account, we study a spatial urban economy where cities can only emerge at pre-determined locations. Each city produces a set of differentiated manufactures that are consumed by all residents in the economy. It is costly to transport goods from one city to another. Specifically, if one unit of a good is shipped from its origin, only a fraction of it arrives at the destination. This fraction becomes smaller when the distance between the origin and the destination increases.For the case of three cities, we examine three different types of optimal city sizes: 1. Local optimum where local governments choose the size of their own city taking the sizes of other cities as given. The optimized utility levels vary with cities so immigration controls are used. 2. Global optimum where a central government chooses the sizes for all three cities as well as the head taxes/subsidies to maintain the migration equilibrium; and 3. Global optimum with local autonomy where local governments still choose their own city sizes but a central government uses head taxes/subsidies to equalize the optimized utility levels among cities.We find that in the local optimum the peripheral cities are bigger than the central city while in the global optimum the reverse is true. Also in the local optimum, the optimized utility level of the central city is higher than that of the peripheral cities. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the central city has to subsidize the peripheral cities in the global optimum and the global optimum with local autonomy. By generalizing our model to allow more cities to emerge, we find that utility increases when we have more cities, except for the case in which residents have a low taste for variety and transport cost is very high."]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Fiscal Transfers in Optimal Spatial Economies with Urban-Rural and Intercity Trade"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Anas, Alex","Economics"],"dc:creator":["Nguyen, Nguyen Thi Binh"],"dc:date":["2019-04-04T20:30:28Z","2019","2018-10-15 21:49:43"],"dc:description":["Ph.D.","This dissertation consists of three essays that study different issues in urban economics.In the first essay, we study a spatial economy with an urban region consisting of a number of identical cities where an urban good is produced and a separate rural region where food is produced. The total population and land area of this economy are fixed. Migration between the two regions can take place until residents, regardless of where they live, have the same level of utility, called the equilibrium utility. A central planner would choose the optimal number of cities as well as how big each city should be in order to maximize the equilibrium utility. Residents immigrate to cities because cities have public goods (healthcare, education, etc.) which they value. Besides examining whether the Henry George Theorem, named after the famous 19th century U.S. political economist Henry George,holds in this setup, the first essay also answers a few other important questions. Among them is the effect of migration on food prices. Under the assumptions of fixed land area and population, when residents move to cities to enjoy public goods, we have less labor and land for food production. As a result, the rural wage and land rent tend to increase. Will this create a pressure to increase food prices? Our numerical simulations show that bigger cities and a higher percentage of urban population (i.e., urbanization) do not necessarily lead to an increase in food prices. Another interesting result is about fiscal transfers between the two regions. More specifically, when public goods are provided in both urban and rural regions, the urban region subsidizes the rural region. Comparative static analysis is used to test the effects of changes in commuting cost, technology, preferences, and population on the structure of this economy.The second essay incorporates the Dixie-Stiglitz model of product differentiation into a spatial urban economy. We first examine the effects of costly intercity trade on the optimal structure of a spatial urban economy; i.e., the optimal number of cities and the optimal size of each city. In this model, we assume that the trading cost between any pair of cities in the system is the same. Under this assumption, we find that when the total population is endogenous, the optimized utility level increases with the number of cities because this allows more varieties to become available. When the total population is fixed, the optimal city size is smaller as compared to the endogenous population case. In the second part of this essay, we introduce a rural region with an agricultural sector into a system of identical cities producing differentiated manufactures. Even though this economy has a fixed population and land area, the optimal size of each city is exactly the same as in the case of endogenous population. This result is intuitive since we still optimize the utility level of a representative resident with respect to the total urban population in this new model. Comparative static analysis confirms the conclusions of the first essay about the relationship between a higher percentage of urban population and food prices.The third and last essay focuses on a system of cities that trade with each other. By relaxing the assumption of identical trading cost for any pair of cities, the optimal city sizes in the equilibrium are different and this provides a more realistic picture of the real world.In the real world, cities cannot emerge at any location but are restricted by geographical conditions (terrain, mountains, rivers, etc.). Taking this fact into account, we study a spatial urban economy where cities can only emerge at pre-determined locations. Each city produces a set of differentiated manufactures that are consumed by all residents in the economy. It is costly to transport goods from one city to another. Specifically, if one unit of a good is shipped from its origin, only a fraction of it arrives at the destination. This fraction becomes smaller when the distance between the origin and the destination increases.For the case of three cities, we examine three different types of optimal city sizes: 1. Local optimum where local governments choose the size of their own city taking the sizes of other cities as given. The optimized utility levels vary with cities so immigration controls are used. 2. Global optimum where a central government chooses the sizes for all three cities as well as the head taxes/subsidies to maintain the migration equilibrium; and 3. Global optimum with local autonomy where local governments still choose their own city sizes but a central government uses head taxes/subsidies to equalize the optimized utility levels among cities.We find that in the local optimum the peripheral cities are bigger than the central city while in the global optimum the reverse is true. Also in the local optimum, the optimized utility level of the central city is higher than that of the peripheral cities. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the central city has to subsidize the peripheral cities in the global optimum and the global optimum with local autonomy. By generalizing our model to allow more cities to emerge, we find that utility increases when we have more cities, except for the case in which residents have a low taste for variety and transport cost is very high."],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/10477/79336"],"dc:language":["eng"],"dc:publisher":["State University of New York at Buffalo"],"dc:rights":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."],"dc:subject":["economics"],"dc:title":["Fiscal Transfers in Optimal Spatial Economies with Urban-Rural and Intercity Trade"],"dc:type":["Text","Dissertation"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:05:14Z"}