Results

CEP discussion paper

Economics of greenfield urban planning

Urban planning has shaped cities for millennia, demarcating property rights and mitigating coordination failures, but its rigidities often conflict with market-driven development, which reflects preferences. Although pla...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Rebuilding cities in Ukraine

Presuming that Ukraine successfully reclaims most or all of its lost territories from Russian occupation, there will be a political drive to bring refugees back to their hometowns and to rebuild destroyed cities. This co...Read more...

Blog

Vox Ukraine:

"What about the economy?": Vernon Henderson on the challenges of Ukraine's recovery (podcast)

Yulia Mincheva, the Analytics Society at VoxUkraine, and J. Vernon Henderson discuss how to rebuild destroyed cities and create conditions for their repopulation in this podcast, "What about the economy?"...Read more...

Chapter

Accelerating urban economic growth in Ukraine

in Rebuilding Ukraine: Principles and policies

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of what Ukraine should become after the war and what tools policymakers can use to fulfill these goals. The leitmotif of this book is clear: reconstruction is not about rebuildin...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Building the City: From Slums to a Modern Metropolis

We model the building of a city, estimate parameters of the model, and calculate welfare losses from institutional frictions encountered in changing land-use. We distinguish formal and slum construction technologies; in ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Colonial legacies: Shaping African cities

Institutions persisting from colonial rule affect the spatial structure and conditions under which 100s of millions of people live in Sub-saharan African cities. In a sample of 318 cities, Francophone cities have more co...Read more...

Journal article

PNAS:

Ethnolinguistic diversity and urban agglomeration

This article shows that higher ethnolinguistic diversity is associated with a greater risk of social tensions and conflict, which, in turn, is a dispersion force lowering urbanization and the incentives to move to big ci...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Urbanization in the developing world: Too early or too slow?

We describe patterns of urbanization in the developing world and the extent to which they differ from the developed world. We consider the extent to which urbanization in the developing world can be explained by conventi...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Does investment in national highways help or hurt hinterland city growth?

We investigate the effects of the recently constructed Chinese national highway system on local economic outcomes. On average, roads that improve access to local markets have small or negative effects on prefecture econo...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Measuring urban economic density

At the heart of urban economics are agglomeration economies, which drive the existence and extent of cities. This paper estimates urban agglomeration effects, exploring simple and very nuanced measures of economic densit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring urban economic density

At the heart of urban economics are agglomeration economies, which drive the existence and extent of cities and are also central to structural transformation and the urbanization process. This paper evaluates the use of ...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

The Development of the African System of Cities

Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced high urban population growth over the past half century, dramatically reshaping the economic and spatial profile of the region. Simultaneously, this process has challenged the conventio...Read more...

Journal article

Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The global distribution of economic activity: nature, history, and the role of trade

We explore the role of natural characteristics in determining the worldwide spatial distribution of economic activity, as proxied by lights at night, observed across 240,000 grid cells. A parsimonious set of 24 physical ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Colonial Legacies: Shaping African Cities

Differential institutions imposed during colonial rule continue to affect the spatial structure and urban interactions in African cities. Based on a sample of 318 cities across 28 countries using satellite data on built ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Roads, railroads, and decentralization of Chinese cities

We investigate how urban railroad and highway configurations have influenced urban form in Chinese cities since 1990. Each radial highway displaces 4% of central city population to surrounding regions, and ring roads dis...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Urban economics for the developing World: An introduction

This is an introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Urban Economics on “Urbanization in Developing Countries: Past and Present”. We argue that the rapid urbanization and the rise of cities in the developing wo...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Political favoritism in China's capital markets and its effect on city sizes

This paper examines political favoritism of cites in national capital markets and the effect of that favoritism on city sizes. The paper estimates the city-by-city variation in the prices of capital across cities in Chin...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The roles of nature and history in world development

Vernon Henderson and colleagues explore fundamental determinants of the location of economic activity....Read more...

Journal article

The World Bank Economic Review:

Volunteerism after the tsunami: The effects of democratization

Using three waves of survey data from fishing villages in Aceh, Indonesia for 2005-09, we examine the determinants of local volunteer labor after the tsunami. Volunteer labor is the village public sector labor force for ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Development Economics:

Has climate change driven urbanization in Africa?

This paper documents strong but differentiated links between climate and urbanization in large panels of districts and cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, which has dried substantially in the past fifty years. The key dimensio...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Investing in roads

Between 1990 and 2010, China constructed an extensive modern road network, including a national system of limited access highways. Vernon Henderson and colleagues investigate the impact on the growth of Chinese cities an...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Highways, Market Access and Urban Growth in China

We investigate the effects of the construction of the national highway system in China on local economic outcomes. The analysis employs three main approaches. The first is based on a structural model of Ricardian trade t...Read more...

Journal article

Science:

Building functional cities

The literature views many African cities as dysfunctional with a hodgepodge of land uses and poor "connectivity." One driver of inefficient land uses is construction decisions for highly durable buildings made under weak...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Global Spatial Distribution of Economic Activity: Nature, History and the Role of Trade

We study the distribution of economic activity, as proxied by lights at night, across 250,000 grid cells of average area 560 square kilometres. We first document that nearly half of the variation can be explained by a pa...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Building the City: Urban Transition and Institutional Frictions

We model the building of a city, estimate parameters of the model, and calculate welfare losses from institutional frictions encountered in changing land-use. We distinguish formal and slum construction technologies; in ...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Development and Cultural Change:

Organization of disaster aid delivery: Spending your donations

Extreme disasters catch the public eye, often resulting in massive infusions of aid that affect not just individual well-being but the fabric of societies. In developing countries, this typically involves foreign nongove...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economic Dynamics:

The dynamics of city formation

This paper examines city formation in a country whose urban population is growing steadily over time, with new cities required to accommodate this growth. In contrast to most of the literature there is immobility of hous...Read more...