Events Detail

Speaker:
Jordan Adamson, Chapman University

Jordan Adamson is a Research Associate at Chapman University investigating experimental economic geography and empirical studies of conflict. He presents a special lecture on Agglomeration and the extent of the market: an experimental investigation into spatially Ccoordinated exchange.

Cities and marketplaces are central to economic development, but we know little about why such agglomerations initially form. I argue that evolutionary forces select for agglomerations when individuals' desire to spatially coordinate exchange in complex environments. To test this idea, I perform a laboratory experiment where geographically dispersed individuals bring different goods to a location for trade. I find that individuals spontaneously coalesce to reap the gains from exchange, re-agglomerate at the same locations after shocks, and have location choices that aggregate to create a Zipf population distribution. I also find that there is more agglomeration in economies with a larger variety of goods, that being land-tied reduces agglomeration, and that being land-tied magnifies the effect of variety.