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To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9787.2008.00544.x Byline: Eckhardt Bode (1) Abstract: ABSTRACT. This paper proposes an approach to delineating metropolitan areas that is more general than the standard approaches in three respects: First, it uses the fraction of land prices attributable to economies of urban agglomeration instead of using commuting intensities as an indicator of economic integration between metropolitan centers and their hinterlands. Second, it identifies metropolitan centers endogenously instead of determining them exogenously. And third, it takes metropolitan subcenters explicitly into account. An empirical illustration is used to show that the approach tends to delineate fewer but larger metropolitan areas in densely populated regions, and smaller metropolitan areas in sparsely populated regions. Author Affiliation: (1)Kiel Institute for the World Economy D-24100 Kiel. E-mail:eckhardt.bode@ifw-kiel.de Article History: Received: August 2006; accepted: July 2007.