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Gabriel Ahlfeldt.

Gabriel Ahlfeldt

Associate

Expertise: quantitative spatial economics, urban economics, environment, finance, political economy, labour, transport

Email:
g.ahlfeldt@lse.ac.uk
g.ahlfeldt@hu-berlin.de
Connect:
Twitter
Website
Links:
CEP Urban
Humboldt University

Biography

Professor Gabriel Ahlfeldt holds the Chair of Econometrics at at Humboldt University in Berlin. He is also a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, and an affiliate of the CEP, CESifo, and CEPR. In his research, Professor Ahlfeldt is interested in how various agglomeration forces shape the spatial distribution of economic activity. His research also analyses the impact of various spatial policies on local house prices, labour markets, political preferences and urban structure.

Current areas of research include:

  • Tall buildings: role of bedrock, cost of height, urbanization
  • Geography of life: aging, life-events, suburbanization
  • Quality of life: measurement, urban quality of life premium, role of trade and mobility frictions
  • Minimum wage: spatial implications, regional minimum wages
  • Transport improvements: dynamic modelling, general equilibrium

Publications

Blog
Why higher house prices lead to higher borrowing

In the past three decades, house prices and mortgage debt in the UK have risen much faster than income. In other words, people end up borrowing more money when house prices go up. This finding goes against many canonical... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Nikodem Szumilo and Jagdish Tripathy

02 October 2024

CEP discussion papers
Housing-consumption channel of mortgage demand

We quantify the housing-consumption channel in mortgage demand according to which households borrow more following house-price increases since housing and non-housing consumption are imperfect substitutes. To identify th... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Nikodem Szumilo and Jagdish Tripathy

29 July 2024

Blog
Dashboards have the power to make complex research accessible to the public and policymakers

While researchers often point to the relevance of their research, economic models and econometric methods are typically inaccessible to a wider audience. Gabriel Ahlfeldt explains how interactive dashboards represent a u... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt

03 January 2024

CEP occasional papers
A micro-geographic house price index for England and Wales

We generate a mix-adjusted house price index for England and Wales from 2010 to 2020 at the level of lower-layer super output areas. To this end, we blend parametric and non-parametric estimation techniques and leverage ... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Felipe Carozzi and Lukas Makovsky

01 December 2023

CEP discussion papers
The skyscraper revolution: Global economic development and land savings

Tall buildings are central to facilitating sustainable urbanization and growth in cities worldwide. We estimate average elasticities of city population and built area to aggregate city building heights of 0.12 and -0.17,... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Nathaniel Baum-Snow and Remi Jedwab

14 November 2023

Journal article
Micro-geographic property price and rent indices

We develop a programming algorithm that predicts a balanced-panel mix-adjusted house price index for arbitrary spatial units from repeated cross-sections of geocoded micro data. The algorithm combines parametric and non-... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Stephan Heblich and Tobias Seidel

01 January 2023

Blog
Skyscrapers with Gabriel Ahlfeldt (podcast)

Skyscrapers! We can't help but find them fascinating. Some cities are full of skyscrapers, and others have none. Developers built a 70-story tower on that parcel, but the proposed building just down the street is only 30... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt

27 July 2022

Journal article
Viewing urban spatial history from tall buildings

Micro-geographic data capturing the spatial distribution of economic activity within cities in history are difficult to access. This paper discusses how tall and durable buildings can be exploited as a source of "big dat... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Jason Barr

01 May 2022

Journal article
The economics of skyscrapers: a synthesis

We document that skyscraper growth since the end of the 19th century has been driven by a reduction in the cost of height, increasing urbanization, and rising incomes. These stylized facts guide us in developing a compet... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Jason Barr

01 May 2022

Blog
What is the optimal minimum wage?

With reports from the European Commission, the UK Treasury advocating significant increases in minimum wage levels, Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Duncan Roth, and Tobias Seidel explore whether such ambitious minimum wage increases i... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel

26 January 2022

CEP discussion papers
Optimal minimum wages

We develop a quantitative spatial model with heterogeneous firms and a monopsonistic labour market to derive minimum wages that maximize employment or welfare. Quantifying the model for German micro regions, we find that... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel

20 January 2022

CEP discussion papers
Micro-geographic property price and rent indices

We develop a programming algorithm that predicts a balanced-panel mix-adjusted house price index for arbitrary spatial units from repeated cross-sections of geocoded micro data. The algorithm combines parametric and non-... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Stephan Heblich and Tobias Seidel

20 July 2021

Journal article
The generation gap in direct democracy: Age vs. cohort effects

We document a generation gap in direct democracy outcomes across a wide range of topics that is causally related to aging. To this end, we combine different sources of postelection survey data covering more than 300 Swis... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Wolfgang Maennig and Steffen Q. Mueller

01 March 2021

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
Lockdown and the social life of big cities

The effects of Covid-19 on the social lives of city dwellers - being able to go to the pub, restaurants and theatre - may be more relevant for the future of cities than its impact on work. That's the implication of a tho... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel

01 March 2021

Blog
Lockdown shows us it is not work that attracts us to big cities - but the social life

Covid-19's effect on the social lives of city dwellers - being able to meet at the pub, restaurants or theatre - may be more relevant for the future of cities than its impact on work, write Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald,... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel

11 December 2020

CEP discussion papers
Quality of life in a dynamic spatial model

We develop a dynamic spatial model in which heterogeneous workers are imperfectly mobile and forward-looking and yet all structural fundamentals can be inverted without assuming that the economy is in a stationary spatia... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel

10 December 2020

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
In brief... Economics of skyscrapers

Many tall buildings appear to be out of scale given contemporary perceptions. But according to Gabriel Ahlfeldt and Jason Barr, the vast majority have a solid economic case for their construction.... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Jason Barr

02 November 2020

CEP discussion papers
Prime locations

We harness big data to detect prime locations - large clusters of knowledge-based tradable services - in 125 global cities and track changes in the within-city geography of prime service jobs over a century. Historically... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Thilo N. H. Albers and Kristian Behrens

05 October 2020

CEP discussion papers
The economics of skyscrapers: a synthesis

This paper provides a synthesis of the state of knowledge on the economics of skyscrapers. First, we document how vertical urban growth has gained pace over the course of the 20th century. Second, we lay out a simple the... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Jason Barr

07 July 2020

Journal article
Direct democracy and intergenerational conflicts in ageing societies

To evaluate the potential effects of population ageing on the outcomes of direct democracy, we analyze the effect of age on voting decisions in public referendums. In a case study of the Stuttgart 21 referendum on one of... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Wolfgang Maennig and Malte Steenbeck

01 January 2020

Journal article
Gewinner und Verlierer von Stadtentwicklung: Ein Plädoyer für mehr Wohneigentum

The desire for more home ownership in Germany remains unbroken. However, not all households succeed in putting this desire into practice. The theoretical and empirical literature on the external benefits and costs of own... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt

01 November 2019

Journal article
Ease vs. noise: Long-run changes in the value of transport (dis)amenities

For a complete cost-benefit analysis of durable infrastructures, it is important to understand how the value of non-market goods such as transit time and environmental quality changes as incomes rise in the long-run. We ... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Volker Nitsch and Nicolai Wendland

01 November 2019

CEP discussion papers
Ease versus noise: long-run changes in the value of transport (dis)amenities

For a complete cost-benefit analysis of durable infrastructures, it is important to understand how the value of non-market goods such as transit time and environmental quality changes as incomes rise in the long-run. We ... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Volker Nitsch and Nicolai Wendland

21 June 2019

Journal article
The economic effects of density: A synthesis

This paper synthesises the state of knowledge on the economic effects of density. We consider 347 estimates of density elasticities of a broad range of outcomes ranging from wages, innovation, rents, various amenities, t... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Elisabetta Pietrostefani

01 May 2019

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
In brief... What the Berlin Wall can teach us about urban development

Award-winning CEP research considers what can be learned from the division and reunification of Berlin.... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Stephen J. Redding, Daniel M. Sturm and Nikolaus Wolf

01 March 2019

Journal article
Tall buildings and land values: Height and construction cost elasticities in Chicago, 1870-2010

Despite unprecedented vertical growth in large cities, the economics of skyscrapers remain understudied. We combine data on tall buildings with a panel of land prices covering 140 years to analyze the determinants of urb... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Daniel P. McMillen

01 December 2018

Journal article
The regional effects of Germany's national minimum wage

We show that the minimum wage introduced in Germany in 2015 led to spatial wage convergence, in particular in the left tail of the distribution, without reducing relative employment in low-wage regions within the first t... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Duncan Roth

01 November 2018

CEP discussion papers
The generation gap in direct democracy

We provide the first systematic documentation and analysis of a generation gap in direct democracy outcomes across a wide range of topics using postelection survey data covering more than 300 Swiss referenda and four dec... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Wolfgang Maennig and Steffen Q. Mueller

19 June 2018

Journal article
Weights to address non-parallel trends in panel difference-in-differences models

Causal inference using the difference-in-differences (DD) method relies on the untestable assumption of parallel counterfactual trends across units that are assigned to different treatments. To facilitate the application... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt

01 June 2018

Journal article
From periphery to core: Measuring agglomeration effects using high-speed rail

We analyze the economic impact of the German high-speed rail (HSR) connecting Cologne and Frankfurt, which provides plausibly exogenous variation in access to surrounding economic mass. We find a causal effect of about 8... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Arne Feddersen

01 March 2018

Journal article
Distinctively Different: A New Approach to Valuing Architectural Amenities

We propose a method to estimate the capitalised value of the architectural design quality of an area. Our economic design premium is identified by spatially differentiating property prices and design quality within neigh... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Nancy Holman

01 February 2018

Journal article
Game of Zones: The Political Economy of Conservation Areas

We develop a simple theory of the conservation area designation process in which we postulate that the level of designation is chosen to comply with interests of local homeowners. Conservation areas provide benefits to l... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Kristoffer Moeller, Sevrin Waights and Nicolai Wendland

01 October 2017

Journal article
Speed 2.0: Evaluating access to universal digital highways

This paper shows that having access to a fast Internet connection is an important determinant of capitalization effects in property markets. Our empirical strategy combines a boundary discontinuity design with controls f... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Pantelis Koutroumpis and Tommaso Valletti

01 July 2017

SERC Discussion Papers
The Compact City in Empirical Research: A Quantitative Literature Review

The ‘compact city’ is one of the most prominent concepts to have emerged in the global urban policy debate, though it is difficult to ascertain to what extent its theorised positive outcomes can be substantiated by evide... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Elisabetta Pietrostefani

22 June 2017

Journal article
Industrial structure and preferences for a common currency – the case of the EURO referendum in Sweden

Attitudes for a common currency differ from nation to nation, or from region to region. We analyse regionally differing voting results of a referendum held in Sweden in lieu of joining the European Monetary Union. We put... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Wolfgang Maennig and Tobias Osterheider

01 March 2017

SERC Discussion Papers
The Economic Effects of Density: A Synthesis

This paper synthesises the state of knowledge on the economic effects of density. We consider 15 outcome categories and 202 estimates of density elasticities from 102 studies. More than 50% of these estimates have not be... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Elisabetta Pietrostefani

31 January 2017

Journal article
Urban renewal after the Berlin wall: A place-based policy evaluation

We use a quasi-experimental research design to study the effects of a spatially targeted renewal policy implemented in Berlin, Germany, in the aftermath of the city's division during the Cold War period. Our results sugg... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Wolfgang Maennig and Felix J. Richter

01 January 2017

SERC Discussion Papers
The Spatial Decay in Commuting Probabilities: Employment Potential vs. Commuting Gravity

We show that an employment potential capitalisation model, which establishes a spatial relationship between the price of land and the spatial distribution of employment through a transport matrix, produces estimates of t... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Nicolai Wendland

04 November 2015

Journal article
The economics of density: evidence from the Berlin Wall

This paper develops a quantitative model of internal city structure that features agglomeration and dispersion forces and an arbitrary number of heterogeneous city blocks. The model remains tractable and amenable to empi... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Stephen J. Redding, Daniel M. Sturm and Nikolaus Wolf

01 November 2015

SERC Discussion Papers
The Vertical City: The Price of Land and the Height of Buildings in Chicago 1870-2010

We analyze the determinants of building heights in Chicago by combining a micro-geographic data set on tall buildings with a unique panel of land prices covering 140 years. Consistent with the predictions of classic urba... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Daniel P. McMillen

14 July 2015

SERC Discussion Papers
From Periphery to Core: Measuring Agglomeration Effects Using High-Speed Rail

We analyze the economic impact of the German high-speed rail (HSR) connecting Cologne and Frankfurt, which provides plausibly exogenous variation in access to surrounding economic mass. We find a causal effect of about 8... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Arne Feddersen

25 March 2015

SERC Discussion Papers
Distinctively Different: A New Approach to Valuing Architectural Amenities

We propose a method to estimate the capitalized value of the architectural design quality of a neighbourhood. Our economic design premium is identified by spatially differentiating property prices and design quality with... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Nancy Holman

04 February 2015

SERC Discussion Papers
Speed 2.0. Evaluating Access to Universal Digital Highways

This paper shows that having access to a fast Internet connection is an important determinant of capitalization effects in property markets. We combine microdata on property prices in England between 1995 and 2010 with l... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Pantelis Koutroumpis and Tommaso Valletti

24 July 2014

SERC Discussion Papers
Chicken or Egg? The PVAR Econometrics of Transportation

To analyze the mutually dependent relationship between local economic performance and the demand for and supply of transport services, we employ the structural panel VAR method that is popular in the macroeconomic litera... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Kristoffer Moeller and Nicolai Wendland

25 March 2014

SERC Discussion Papers
Urban Renewal after the Berlin Wall

Urban renewal areas are popular but empirically understudied spatial planning instruments designed to prevent urban decline and induce renewal. We use a quasi-experimental research design to study the effects of 22 renew... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Wolfgang Maennig and Felix J. Richter

18 December 2013

SERC Discussion Papers
No Escape? The Co-ordination Problem in Heritage Preservation

Conservation areas (CAs) are among the most restrictive English planning policies. Designation implies a significant limitation of owners’ control over the shape and appearance of their properties. The policy, however, c... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Nancy Holman

23 October 2013

SERC Discussion Papers
Game of Zones: The Economics of Conservation Areas

Provided there are positive external benefits attached to the historic character of buildings, owners of properties in designated conservation areas benefit from a reduction in uncertainty regarding the future of their a... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Kristoffer Moeller, Sevrin Waights and Nicolai Wendland

27 September 2013

SERC Discussion Papers
Urbanity

I define a composite amenity that provides aesthetic and consumption value to local residents: Urbanity. A novel data set of geo-tagged photos shared in internet communities serves as a proxy for urbanity. From the spati... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt

17 May 2013

SERC Discussion Papers
The Economics of Density: Evidence from the Berlin Wall

This paper develops a quantitative model of city structure to separate agglomeration forces, dispersion forces and fundamentals as determinants of location choices. The model remains tractable and amenable to empirical a... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Stephen J. Redding, Daniel M. Sturm and Nikolaus Wolf

13 September 2012

CEP discussion papers
The Economics of Density: Evidence from the Berlin Wall

This paper develops a quantitative model of city structure to separate agglomeration forces, dispersion forces and fundamentals as determinants of location choices. The model remains tractable and amenable to empirical a... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Stephen J. Redding, Daniel M. Sturm and Nikolaus Wolf

28 June 2012

SERC Discussion Papers
Form or Function? The Impact of New Football Stadia on Property Prices in London

Prestigious sports facilities increasingly feature among the most expensive development projects worldwide. Considerable public funds are often committed based on expected neighbourhood effects. This paper focuses on the... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Georgios Kavetsos

13 July 2011

SERC Discussion Papers
Homeownership and NIMBYism: A Spatial Analysis of Airport Effects

This study evaluates the cost of aircraft noise in Berlin, Germany, on the background of the home-voter hypothesis, which has received increasing attention in the literature. First, we use exogenous variation in airport ... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Wolfgang Maennig

01 July 2011

SERC Discussion Papers
Valuing Iconic Design: Frank Lloyd Wright Architecture in Oak Park, Illinois

This study investigates the willingness of homebuyers to pay for co-location with iconic architecture. Oak Park, Illinois was chosen as the study area given its unique claim of having 24 residential structures designed b... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Alexandra Mastro

01 July 2011

SERC Discussion Papers
If We Build, Will They Pay? Predicting Property Price Effects of Transport Innovations

In this study I develop a partial equilibrium approach for the prediction of property price effects of transport network extensions. It combines a gravity-type labor market accessibility indicator with a transport decisi... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt

01 March 2011

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