An Urban Configuration with Online Competition

Abstract This paper introduces the impact of online competition to analysis of the urban configuration of a small open city, which was first developed by Alonso (1964. Location and Land Use. Cambridge: Harvard University Press), Mills (1967. “An Aggregative Model of Resource Allocation in a Metropolitan Area.” The American Economic Review 57 (2): 197–210), and Muth (1969. Cities and Housing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press) (AMM hereafter). In comparison to a revised AMM model in Lai and Tsai (2008. “Simplified Alonso-Mills-Muth Model with a Monopoly Vendor.” Journal of Urban Economics 63 (2): 536–43) which assumed a monopoly vendor, the present paper’s online entry brings competition, eventually causes price reduction, city expansion, and asymmetrically ascending land rent, and makes the incumbent vendor relocate to a more remote city boundary. When the disadvantage of online purchasing is not large, the urban configuration demonstrates that most residents purchase online, and only the residents living near the physical vendor make shopping trips. Finally, the benefit of city expansion from online competition eventually goes to the absentee landowners by way of the raised land rents.