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Johann Heinrich von Thünen (24 June 1783 – 22 September 1850), sometimes spelt Thuenen, was a prominent nineteenth century economist and a native of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in northern Germany.〔He "ranks alongside Marx as the greatest German economist of the nineteenth century" (Fernand Braudel) 〕 Thünen was a Mecklenburg landowner, who in the first volume of his treatise ''The Isolated State'' (1826) developed the first serious treatment of spatial economics and Economic geography, connecting it with the theory of rent. The importance lies less in the pattern of land use predicted than in its analytical approach. Thünen developed the basics of the theory of marginal productivity in a mathematically rigorous way, summarizing it in the formula in which : where R=land rent; Y=yield per unit of land; c=production expenses per unit of commodity; p=market price per unit of commodity; F=freight rate (per agricultural unit, per mile); m=distance to market. Thünen's model of agricultural land, created before industrialization, made the following simplifying assumptions: * The city is located centrally within an "Isolated State." * The Isolated State is surrounded by wilderness. * The land is completely flat and has no rivers or mountains. * Soil quality and climate are consistent. * Farmers in the Isolated State transport their own goods to market via oxcart, across land, directly to the central city. There are no roads. * Farmers behave rationally to maximize profits. The use of a piece of land is put to is a function of the cost of transport to market and the land rent a farmer can afford to pay (determined by yield, which is held constant here). The model generated four concentric rings of agricultural activity. Dairying and intensive farming lies closest to the city. Since vegetables, fruit, milk and other dairy products must get to market quickly, they would be produced close to the city. Timber and firewood would be produced for fuel and building materials in the second ring. Wood was a very important fuel for heating and cooking and is very heavy and difficult to transport so it is located as close to the city. The third zone consists of extensive fields crops such as grain. Since grains last longer than dairy products and are much lighter than fuel, reducing transport costs, they can be located further from the city. Ranching is located in the final ring. Animals can be raised far from the city because they are self-transporting. Animals can walk to the central city for sale or for butchering. Beyond the fourth ring lies the wilderness, which is too great a distance from the central city for any type of agricultural product. Thünen's rings proved especially useful to economic history, such as Fernand Braudel's ''Civilization and Capitalism,'' untangling the economic history of Europe and European colonialism before the Industrial Revolution blurred the patterns on the ground. In economics, Thünen rent is an economic rent created by spatial variation or location of a resource. It is 'that which can be earned ''above'' that which can be earned at the margin of production'. == Model of agricultural land use: the Thünen rings == In his theory of "The Isolated State", he started out from Adam Smith's idea of "economic man": that the farmer is expected to maximize his profit ("economic rent") from his farmland. Thünen, as a landlord, knew that such returns depends on an optimal use of the land surfaces and the transport costs. In concentrating on the effects of these two variables on profits, removal of other factors results in a homogeneous – and isolated – state: A circular, completely undilating plane with a single, dominant market in the center and no interactions with the outside. The economy in the surrounding rural area would have to rearrange itself according to economic behavior in such a way that each industry brings optimal profit in: Transport cost depends on the distance from the market and different kind of products. The gain from farming per unit area (vocational rent) decreases with increasing distance from the market. The minimum price of a commodity is calculated by vocational rent, transport costs and fixed production costs – the profit is then the difference between the costs and the fixed market price. Idealized pattern of agricultural land use zones in Thünen's model Locational rent, a term used by Thünen in his argument, is to be understood as the equivalent to land value. It corresponds to the maximum amount a farmer could pay for using the land, without making losses. It can be defined as the equation below: is... * L: Locational rent (in DM/) * Y: Yield (in ) * P: Market price of the crop (in ) * C: Production cost of the crop (in ) * D: Distance from the market (in ) * F: Transport cost (in ) Take the locational rent of a product with a yield of 1,000 , for example, with a fixed price of 100 DM/t in the market. Production and transport costs are respectively, 50 DM/t and 1 DM/t/km. The locational rent is 50,000 DM/km2 at the market, 40,000 DM/km2 10 km from the market and only 20,000 DM/km2 30 km from the market. Since locational rent falls with increasing distance from the market, the amount each farmer is willing to pay for agricultural land will shrink and the price of land will eventually decline. Thünen concluded that the cultivation of a crop is only worthwhile within certain distances from the city: beyond that, either the cost of the land becomes too high, with increasing distances transport costs also increase, or, if there is another product having greater yield or lower transport costs. After a distance from the market (the city) the production of a crop becomes unprofitable, either because its profits drop to zero or the profits earned by other crops are higher, as von Thünen calculated them for products having different intensities (cattle, wood, grain, eggs, milk, etc.): For each product there is a certain distance from the city where its production would be worthwhile. Since Thünen referred transport costs directly to the market ("Luftlinie"), circular land use zones arises - the Thünen rings. Representation of the locational rent relationship between two agricultural goods The farmers of these products compete against each other, plant their crops concentrically around the market according to the locational rent curves of their own crops. Products having low yields with high price and high transport costs relative to its weight or distance due to its weight, will have higher locational rent close to the market than a product having lower transport costs. Locational rent is the highest possible amount one will pay for the use of the land for a certain cultivation, and is a relative indicator of competitiveness of it in the market. (on ) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Johann Heinrich von Thünen」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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