The Monocentric Model and Employment Location

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The monocentric urban model highlights the important link between transportation access and urban form. Yet as metropolitan areas have become increasingly multicentric, the monocentric model has been criticized on several levels. This paper tests an important assumption used in many monocentric models-namely that employment location is exogenous to population location within an urban area. Using data on population and employment changes in a group of New Jersey municipalities, this work shows that employment changes are endogenous to the population change in a surrounding labor market. This suggests that urban models should give more attention to the problem of employment location within metropolitan areas.