Results

Blog

Vox EU:

Tall buildings lead to more compact and productive cities

Land-use regulations, including height limits, affect housing affordability and urban productivity. This column analyses over 11,000 urban agglomerations and 300,000 tall buildings to explore the effect of height restric...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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...

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

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...

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...