This important study shows that an understanding of product differentiation is crucial to understanding how modern market economies function and that differentiated markets can be analyzed using discrete choice models of consumer behavior.
Product differentiation - in quality, packaging, design, color, and style - has an important impact on consumer choice. It also provides a rich source of data that has been largely unexplored because there has been no generally accepted way to model the information available. This important study shows that an understanding of product differentiation is crucial to understanding how modern market economies function and that differentiated markets can be analyzed using discrete choice models of consumer behavior. It provides a valuable synthesis of existing, often highly technical work in both differentiated markets and discrete choice models and extends this work to establish a coherent theoretical underpinning for research in imperfect competition.The discrete choice approach provides an ideal framework for describing the demands for differentiated products and can be used for studying most product differentiation models in the literature. By introducing extra dimensions of product heterogeneity, the framework also provides richer models of firm location. Discrete Choice Theory of Product Differentiation introduces students and researchers to the field, starting at the beginning and moving through to frontier research. The first four chapters detail the consumer-theoretic foundations underlying choice probability systems (including an overview of the main models used in the psychological theory of choice), while the next four chapters apply the probabilistic choice approach to oligopoly models of product differentiation, product selection, and location choice. The final chapter suggests various extensions of the models presented as well topics for further research.

Discrete Choice Theory of Product Differentiation

Business & Money

Thisse, Jacques-François

Anderson, Simon P.

De Palma, Andre

Economics

Mit Pr

Economic Geography and the Unequal Development of Regions (Routledge Studies in Global Competition)

Behind the mystery of economic growth stands another mystery: why do some places fare better than others? Casual evidence shows that sizable differences exist at very different spatial scales (countries, regions and cities). This book aims to discuss the main economic reasons for the existence of peaks and troughs in the spatial distribution of wealth and people, with a special emphasis on the role of large cities and regional agglomerations in the process of economic development.

Prager, Jean-Claude

Reference

Routledge

Economics of Agglomeration: Cities, Industrial Location, and Regional Growth

Fujita, Masahisa

Cambridge University Press

Economics of Agglomeration: Cities, Industrial Location, and Globalization

Economic activities are not concentrated on the head of a pin, nor are they spread evenly over a featureless plane. On the contrary, they are distributed very unequally across locations, regions, and countries. Even though economic activities are, to some extent, spatially concentrated because of natural features, economic mechanisms that rely on the trade-off between various forms of increasing returns and different types of mobility costs are more fundamental. This book is a study of the economic reasons for the existence of a large variety of agglomerations arising from the global to the local. This second edition combines a comprehensive analysis of the fundamentals of spatial economics and an in-depth discussion of the most recent theoretical developments in new economic geography and urban economics. It aims to highlight several of the major economic trends observed in modern societies.

This book provides the first unifying analysis of the range of economic reasons for the clustering of firms and households. Its goal is to explain further the trade-off between various forms of increasing returns and different types of mobility costs. The main focus of the analysis is on cities, but it also explores the formation of other agglomerations, such as commercial districts within cities, industrial clusters at the regional level, and the existence of imbalance between regions.

Economic Geography: The Integration of Regions and Nations

Economic Geography is the most complete, up-to-date textbook available on the important new field of spatial economics. This book fills a gap by providing advanced undergraduate and graduate students with the latest research and methodologies in an accessible and comprehensive way. It is an indispensable reference for researchers in economic geography, regional and urban economics, international trade, and applied econometrics, and can serve as a resource for economists in government.
 Economic Geography presents advances in economic theory that explain why, despite the increasing mobility of commodities, ideas, and people, the diffusion of economic activity is very unequal and remains agglomerated in a limited number of spatial entities. The book complements theoretical analysis with detailed discussions of the empirics of the economics of agglomeration, offering a mix of theoretical and empirical research that gives a unique perspective on spatial disparities. It reveals how location continues to matter for trade and economic development, yet how economic integration is transforming the global economy into an economic space in which activities are performed within large metropolitan areas exchanging goods, skills, and information. Economic Geography examines the future implications of this evolution in the spatial economy and relates them to other major social and economic trends.
<ul>
 <li>Provides a complete introduction to economic geography </li>
 <li>Explains the latest theory and methodologies </li>
 <li>Covers the empirics of agglomeration, from spatial concentration measurement to structural estimations of economic geography models </li>
 <li>Includes history and background of the field </li>
 <li>Serves as a textbook for students and a resource for professionals</li>
 
</ul>

Combes, Pierre-Philippe

Mayer, Thierry

Princeton University Press

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