Finite element analysis was carried out using wafer-scale and particle-scale models to understand the mechanism of the fast removal rate(edge effect) at wafer edges in the chemical-mechanical polishing process. This is the first to report that a particle-scale model can explain the edge effect well in terms of stress distribution and magnitude. The results also revealed that the mechanism could not be fully understood by using the wafer-scale model, which has been used in many previous studies. The wafer-scale model neither gives the stress magnitude that is sufficient to remove material nor indicates the coincidence between the stress distribution and the removal rate along a wafer surface.