This study investigates how rent sensitivity to population growth affects agglomeration in the Tokyo metropolitan area. In the theoretical part, we investigate the model of a metropolitan area with heterogeneous regions. We find that if the rent is not sensitive to population growth, the population grows more in central regions. In contrast, if the rent is sensitive to population growth, the population grows more in suburban regions. In the empirical part, we test the implications of the model using municipality-level panel data for the Tokyo metropolitan area. We find that the population elasticity of land price was greater than two before the mid-1990s, but was less than two thereafter. We also find that in the Tokyo metropolitan area, the population grew more in suburban regions until the mid-1990s, but grew more in central regions thereafter. These empirical findings are consistent with our theoretical predictions. We confirm that the results are robust even when we change the subsample periods. We also show that essentially the same results hold even when implementing the same experiment for the Osaka metropolitan area, the second largest metropolitan area in Japan.

这项研究调查了租金对人口增长的敏感性如何影响东京都会区的集聚。在理论部分，我们研究了具有异类区域的大都市区模型。我们发现，如果租金对人口增长不敏感，那么中部地区的人口增长会更多。相反，如果租金对人口增长敏感，那么郊区人口就会增长更多。在实证部分中，我们使用市级面板数据对东京都会区测试了模型的含义。我们发现，土地价格的人口弹性在1990年代中期之前大于2，但在此之后小于2。我们还发现，在东京都会区，直到1990年代中期，郊区的人口增长更多，但此后在中部地区增长了。这些经验发现与我们的理论预测是一致的。我们确认即使更改子采样周期，结果也很可靠。我们还表明，即使对日本第二大都市区大阪都会区实施相同的实验，也基本上可以获得相同的结果。