05.11.2024 - 13:39

New Publication by Jens Wrona and Tomoya Mori

Centrality Bias in Inter-City Trade. In: Regional Science and Urban Economics, Vol. 109, November 2024

The research paper Centrality Bias in Inter-City Trade, written by Jens Wrona (University of Duisburg-Essen, Mercator School of Management) and Tomoya Mori (Kyoto University, Kyoto Institute of Economic Research), has recently been published in Regional Science and Urban Economics. In this article, the authors identify a centrality bias in Japanese inter-city trade. Their findings reveal that shipments from large central places to their surrounding hinterlands are 50 % to 125 % larger than predicted by the workhorse model of the empirical trade literature. Breaking down the centrality bias in inter-city trade along the margins of their data, the authors find that aggregate shipments from central places to their associated hinterlands are disproportionately larger not because there are more shipments per industry or because transactions are on average more valuable, but because central places cater to their hinterland across a considerably wider range of industries.

The full article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2024.104060 (Open access)


^{Japan's Central Places with their Hinterlands}