交易效率、人口密度与厚实市场——内生分工的经济分析

Trading Efficiency, Population Density, and Thick Markets: A Model of Endogenous Spec ialization and the Division of Labor

本文在分工经济与交易费用的权衡中,创新性引入人口密度的双重外部性和资源的竞争性,借助于产消合一的内生专业化模型,来分析影响人口密度的经济因素、解释人口密度在分工网络中的作用原理。均衡及比较静态分析显示:交易效率改进,将促进区域的最优人口密度增高,强化交易品的专业化水平,扩大分工网络,增强人口密度在分工网络中的正效应——放大技术生产力,节省学习投入,扩增产品的消费和交易种类,提高总产出量、市场容量和产销转化率,促成交易密集的厚实市场,从而减轻人口稠密和资源稀缺的负效应,导致人均真实收入上升。本文模型有助于破解人口、分工与增长之谜。

This paper,by using a model with a trade-off between the economies of endogenous specialization and trading costs,particularly with positive and negative effects on the prosumer density,elucidates factors to determine population density and explains its role in the market.The equilibrium and its comparative static analyses show that the increase in trading efficiency will raise the density of population linking with the network of division of labor,thus thickening the market.The improvement in trading efficiency will also reduce the burden of the dense population on scarce resources.As a result of the increase in trading efficiency,production and trading of products grow in both variety and quantity,the transactions become dense and real per capita income rises.