The Urban Economics Workshop 2025
空間情報科学研究センター（CSIS）との共催ワークショップ

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15:30-17:00 熊谷元宏(Australian National University)
タイトル・概要TBA

17:10-18:40 武田航平(National University of Singapore)
タイトル・概要TBA

修士論文報告会

15:00-15:30 報告者: 新谷とも
「日本の書籍市場における再販売価格維持制度の効果」
（主査: 佐藤泰裕、副査: 高橋孝明・大津優貴）

15:30-16:00 報告者: 安斎由里菜
"Crematorium and Real Estate in Japan"
（主査: 佐藤泰裕、副査: 高橋孝明・大津優貴）

Jongkwan (Kwan) Lee (Yonsei University)
"TBA"

Yao-Min Chiang（National Taiwan University）
Constrained Cities, Minimum Wage Polices, and House Prices
(with Jarjisu Sa-Aadu and James Shilling)

We consider The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 and examine the extent to which it influenced housing demand and construction costs in the United States. Utilizing difference-in-difference and two-way fixed-effects regression models, we analyze housing prices and starts across bound and unbound states, as well as constrained MSAs within bound states. Our findings reveal that the Act significantly increased housing demand, with higher cumulative post-abnormal housing returns in housing prices in bound states than unbound states using the two-way fixed-effects model. Additionally, we observe a substantial increase in housing construction costs in constrained MSAs These results highlight the complex spillover effects of minimum wage policies on housing markets and construction costs, providing a nuanced understanding of the economic impacts of the 2007 minimum wage increase.

Donald Davis（Columbia University）
"Segregation, Spillovers, and the Locus of Racial Change" (with Matthew Easton and Stephan Thies)

Existing empirical research in economics on neighborhood racial sorting is overwhelmingly premised on the idea that racial preferences for a location depend on the racial shares in that location, without considering potential spatial spillover effects from nearby areas. Does this matter for the way we view the cross-section and dynamics of racial neighborhood segregation? We nest Schelling (1971)'s bounded neighborhood and spatial proximity theories within a discrete choice model, where the key distinction is precisely such spatial spillovers. We simulate the model and examine the data for 1970-2000 for more than 100 U.S. metros. Two features of the data are most compelling: the powerful presence of racial clusters and the fact that drastic racial change is concentrated at the boundary of these clusters. Both point to the spatial proximity model as the proper foundation for a theory of racial neighborhood evolution. We use these insights to revisit prominent results on racial tipping where our theory guides us to distinguish differences by location. While prior research pointed to powerful racial tipping in the form of White exit, we show this is largely driven by theoretically-distinct “biased white suburbanization” leading to White entry in remote areas. In urban areas far from existing Minority clusters, we find zero or small tipping effects, at odds with a bounded neighborhood interpretation. The most consistent effects of tipping, still of modest size, are found in areas adjacent to existing Minority clusters, confirming the relevance of the racial spillovers of the spatial proximity model. Existing research conflates these quite distinct effects. Overall, our results suggests that tipping is a less central feature of racial neighborhood change than suggested in prior research and that greater attention needs to be paid to spatial dimensions of the problem.

Yukako Ono and Zheyu Zeng (Keio University)
"Geography and Reorganization of Municipal Borders: the Case of Japanese Municipal Mergers"

Kwan Ok Lee (National University of Singapore)
"Revisiting the N-Minute City: Big Data Evidence from New York City and Singapore"

Yukako Ono and Zheyu Zeng:
This study investigates the role of geography in shaping the spatial borders of municipalities, focusing on Japan’s municipal mergers. Specifically, it examines whether the geographic integration between municipalities influence the efficiency of public good provisions after mergers, thereby encouraging the merger decision. While fiscal challenges often drive mergers, the post-merger efficiency in delivering public goods is crucial. The study analyzes the factors that determine the likelihood of municipal pairs merging by examining their geographic and fiscal characteristics. Our empirical results, derived from bivariate probit analyses, demonstrate that both firstand second-nature geography significantly influence merger probabilities, in terms of the magnitude of the effects, more so than financial variables. Furthermore, the impact of various factors varies depending on the fiscal conditions of the municipalities, possibly reflecting the differing motives and expected outcomes following the merger.

Kwan Ok Lee:
The concept of the N-minute city—focused on neighborhood self-sufficiency—has gained increasing relevance in urban planning, particularly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has promoted shorter-distance travel and a rise in remote work. This talk revisits the ongoing debates surrounding the N-minute city by addressing two key questions: (1) Can N-minute city indices be more effectively constructed using a dynamic choice framework that accounts for cross-neighborhood and temporal variations in both demand (sorting) and supply? This framework incorporates the geographic distribution of amenities with varying quality levels and travel costs, weighted by resident attributes, allowing for a comprehensive assessment of neighborhood residents' welfare and the derivation of predicted probabilities of N-minute city behavior. (2 Do zoning factors, such as the balance between commercial and residential land use, along with the urban hierarchy (central areas, regional centers, and towns), influence the realization of the N-minute city? Using big data derived from mobile phone-based mobility patterns in New York City and subway ridership data in Singapore, this talk offers new insights into more robust methods of measuring and applying N-minute city principles across diverse metropolitan contexts.

UTokyo Center for Real Estate Innovation (CREI)–Jiro Yoshida
MIT Asia Real Estate Initiative–Siqi Zheng
UTokyo Urban Economics Workshop–Yasuhiro Sato and Takaaki Takahashi

[UTokyo-MIT Real Estate Workshop 2025]

山岸敦 (一橋大学経済研究所)
Atsushi Yamagishi (Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University)
"Urbanization without Industrialization: Evidence from US Bases in Okinawa" (with Ikuto Aiba)

We examine how the inflow of external income shapes the pattern of urbanization and the economic structure. We focus on the unique case of Okinawa in Japan, where many US military bases were constructed for strategic reasons and the income inflow from them accounted for up to 40% of the aggregate income. Using newly digitized data, we first document rapid urbanization near the bases, driven by service sector expansion rather than manufacturing. We then develop a new quantitative spatial model and calibrate it to the Okinawan economy in 1970. Our counterfactual analysis highlights that the US-base related income was crucial to urbanization without industrialization. Contrary to Dutch disease concerns, we find that such urbanization without industrialization significantly increased aggregate income and welfare.

＊今回のセミナーは日本貿易振興機構アジア経済研究所との共催です。
This seminar is co-hosted by Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO).

Jacques-François Thisse (Université catholique de Louvain)
"Spatial pricing and the strategic choice of retail formats" with Toshitaka Gokan and Xiwei Zhu

We develop a model in which offline and online transportation costs, online shopping disutility cost and consumer taste heterogeneity, and online and offline retailers’ pricing policies interact to determine the equilibrium retail format that emerges from firms’ and consumers' choices. This is done by combining spatial pricing and discrete choice theory within a unified game-theoretic framework. We study the industry equilibrium, as well as the corresponding consumer surplus and total welfare. Our results show that firms' choices of a retail format and consumers' decision to buy from an offline or online firm often depend on consumers' locations relative to firms. Comparing aggregate consumer surpluses shows that consumers prefer online to alternative channels when they are sufficiently heterogeneous, but this need not be so when heterogeneity is weak. When consumers’ tastes are heterogeneous enough, the retail format maximizing total welfare depends on the value of the distaste costs of online purchase. Thus, the nature of products supplied by retailers is likely to affect the socially desirable retailing system through the degree of product differentiation.

中澤 伸彦 (一橋大学)
Nobuhiko Nakazawa (Hitotsubashi University)
"The Impact of the Publication of School Test Scores on Housing Markets: Evidence from Japan"

Identifying parents’ willingness to pay for school quality is a significant issue. To estimate the magnitude, we focus on the setting of Japanese public elementary schools, which are highly uniform in terms of school inputs and operate under a distinctive disclosure policy. Although the disclosure of test scores at the school level had been strictly prohibited in Japan, the central government implemented a reform in 2014 that allows for the publication of results by school. Employing a boundary discontinuity design close to school district boundaries combined with a difference-in-differences model before and after publication, we find heterogeneous results by market that an increase of one standard deviation in total test score leads to increased sale prices of apartments by 2.0%–2.7% but to increases in rents of only 0.4%–0.6% after publication.