Wednesday 10 December 2025 11:00 - 12:00

SAL 1.04, 1st Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH

About this event

This paper studies how consumption opportunities vary within a city and how these differences shape urban inequality and residential sorting. Using novel barcode-level price data from all formal retailers in Alagoas, Brazil, I document large within-city disparities in prices, varieties, and product quality. Higher-income neighbourhoods offer greater variety and quality at systematically higher prices. To interpret these patterns, I develop a quantitative spatial model in which households value varieties and quality differently by income, and firms choose both locations and product assortments. In this environment, neighbourhood composition affects the market size for a given variety, creating consumption externalities: households benefit from living near others with similar preferences because it expands the set of varieties they can access. The model clarifies how these endogenous differences in product availability and pricing generate an amenity that attracts richer households and amplifies spatial inequality.

Participants are expected to adhere to the CEP Events Code of Conduct.

Directions

This event will take place in SAL 1.04, 1st Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH.

The building is labelled SAL on the LSE campus map. You can also find us on Google Maps. For further information, go to contact us.

International Economics Workshops are part of the CEP's Trade programme.