Congestion, Agglomeration, and the Structure of Cities

Jeffrey Brinkman

Economic Advisor and Economist

May 2016

WP 16-13 — Congestion costs in urban areas are significant and clearly represent a negative externality. Nonetheless, economists also recognize the production advantages of urban density in the form of positive agglomeration externalities.

Supersedes Working Paper 13-25 — Congestion, Agglomeration, and the Structure of Cities.

The long-run equilibrium outcomes in economies with multiple correlated but offsetting externalities have yet to be fully explored in the literature. Therefore, the author has developed a spatial equilibrium model of urban structure that includes both congestion costs and agglomeration externalities. The author then estimates the structural parameters of the model using a computational algorithm to match the spatial distribution of employment, population, land use, land rents, and commute times in the data. Policy simulations based on the estimates suggest that congestion pricing may have ambiguous consequences for economic welfare.

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