International Cities as the Economic Unit of Account: Theory and Measurement

拟议研究的目的是促进宏观经济学从依赖国民收入和生产总值(NIPA)向国际统一的城市收入和生产总值(CIPA)体系的演变。在经济研究和政策分析的范围方面，这种转变收获很大，而损失却很小。世界城市化从1900年的13%上升到2005年的49%，预计到2030年将上升到60%，这一事实很明显地表明了这一点(2006年联合国世界城市化展望报告)。根据经济学若干子领域得出的初步结果，所获得的成果是相当可观的。国际经济学家利用城市层面的价格调查，包括共同采购经理人和合作者的工作，发现在使用城市层面的数据时，对国家价格指数的研究得出的许多事实并未浮出水面。价格调整比全国数据显示的要快得多。贸易较少的商品与贸易较多的商品相比，偏差更大、更持久。当以绝对LOP偏差为衡量标准时，来自国家边界的市场分割没有以综合CPI指数的时间序列波动性为衡量标准时那么严重。在这些事实的背景下，三个核心主题浮出水面。首先，在向零售市场和当地服务生产(教育、医疗、紧急服务、公用事业和交通基础设施)的最终消费者分配贸易商品方面，服务部门都很重要。其次，价格相对于边际成本的加价在解释地理价格差异方面发挥了核心作用。第三，三分之二的国际贸易在交易的一端只有一家跨国公司。虽然这表明有利于地理价格歧视的行业集中度水平，但关于加价地理位置和产品级别生产的地理集中度之间的关系仍有许多需要了解。智力价值研究的智力价值是提供数据基础设施，以支持微观经济层面的动态随机一般均衡(DSGE)建模。这使得能够对宏观经济冲击的不同经济反应以及微观经济溢出效应的空间尺度进行综合研究。LOP是在一般均衡框架下研究商品市场和城市的一个令人信服的理由。挑战在于建立一种以现实的方式纳入LOP偏差的构建模型。一些市场在地理上是细分的(医疗服务、公共教育)，其他市场是全球一体化的(农业、制成品)。城市的均衡取决于商品、劳动力和资本市场的分割平衡。更广泛的影响是一种思考空间经济互动的新方式。不必在武断的政治分歧的基础上定义冲击和政策。城市是世界经济的缩影，提供了对社会科学的洞察。由于公共服务的提供不成比例，城市提供了研究政治经济学的实验室，包括跨越国界的问题。将这里开发的数据和模型与谷歌地球联系起来，学生和教师将能够以更全面和更严格的方式探索城市的经济、地理、文化和政治维度。

The objective of the proposed research is to facilitate the evolution of macroeconomics from reliance on the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) toward an internationally integrated system of City Income and Product Accounts (CIPA). Much is gained by this transition in terms of the scope of economic research and policy analysis while little is lost. That little is lost is evident in the fact that world urbanization increased from 13% in 1900 to 49% in 2005 and is predicted to rise to 60% by 2030 (2006 UN World Urbanization Prospects report). What is gained is substantial based on preliminary results emerging from a number of sub-fields of economics. International economists using city-level price surveys, including work by the co-PIs and collaborators, find that many facts arising from studies of national price indices fail to emerge when city level data is employed. Price adjustment is much faster than what the national data show. Goods that are less traded have larger and more persistent deviations than goods that are more traded. Market segmentation arising from national borders is less severe when absolute LOP deviations are the metric than when time series volatility of aggregated CPI indices are the metric. Three core themes surface in the context of these facts. First, the service sector looms large, both in the distribution of traded goods to final consumers in retail markets and in local services production (education, medicine, emergency services, utilities and transportation infrastructure). Second, markups of price over marginal cost play a central role in accounting for geographic price dispersion. Third, two thirds of international trade has a single multinational firm at one end of the transaction. While this suggests levels of industry concentration conducive to geographic price discrimination, there is still much to learn about the relationship between the geography of markups and the geographic concentration of product-level production.Intellectual MeritThe intellectual merit of the research is to provide data infrastructure to support Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) modeling at the microeconomic level. This allows integrated study of heterogenous economic responses to macroeconomic shocks as well as the spatial scale of microeconomic spillovers. LOP is a compelling reason to study goods markets and cities in a general equilibrium framework. The challenge is to a build model that incorporates LOP deviations in a realistic fashion. Some markets are geographically segmented (medical services, public education), others are globally integrated (agricultural, manufactured goods). The equilibrium of a city depends on the balance of segmentation across the goods, labor and capital markets.Broader ImpactThe broader impact is a novel way of thinking about spatial economic interaction. Shocks and policies need not be defined on the basis of arbitrary political divisions. Cities are microcosms of the world economy that offer insights into the social sciences. Since services are disproportionately publicly provided, cities provide laboratories to study political economy, including issues that span national boundaries. Linking the data and models developed here with Google Earth, students and teachers will be able to explore economic, geographic, cultural and political dimensions of cities in a more integrated and rigorous manner.