Results

CEP discussion paper

Is data privacy a losing game? Evidence from Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy

We study the impact of Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy, which requires apps to obtain explicit user permission before cross-app tracking, on the mobile gaming industry. Using SensorTower US data on the top...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Industrial Economics:

Asymmetric pass-through and competition

We study the retail price pass-through of four major tax changes in petroleum products using daily pricing data from gas stations on small Greek islands. We find that (i) the pass-through of the tax hikes is five times h...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Take-away findings from food delivery apps

Do delivery apps reduce or enhance the attraction of cities?...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Why waste segregation policies fail ? and how training makes them work

Reducing landfill use cuts greenhouse gas emissions and costs less...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Why don't we have nicer buildings?

The benefits of distinctive urban architecture extend far beyond the buildings themselves, but the costs are borne by the developers. This can lead to underinvestment in high-quality design - and it raises the question o...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Labor Economics:

The causal effect of an income shock on children's human capital

We investigate the causal impact of a generous unconditional cash transfer at birth on children's health and academic performance. Using rich administrative data, we take advantage of the unexpected introduction of a ?ba...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Geographical thinking

Making the industrial strategy work in Manchester...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unpacking the restaurant experience: how food delivery technology favors the affluent urban core

We study how technological innovation has transformed the valuation of consumption services, using the sudden national expansion of food delivery services (FDS) in China as a natural experiment. Using a Bartik-style inst...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What is the "right" geographic market definition?

This paper examines the "right" geographic definition of relevant markets by analyzing how excise tax pass-through varies with local competition in the retail gasoline market of a large metropolitan city. Using a natural...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Industrial Organization:

What is the "right" geographic market definition?

This paper examines the "right" geographic definition of relevant markets by analyzing how excise tax pass-through varies with local competition in the retail gasoline market of a large metropolitan city. Using a natural...Read more...

Blog

VoxDev:

Why waste segregation policies fail - and how training makes them work

Citizen training that builds households' practical capability to segregate waste can deliver large, persistent and socially amplified improvements in waste management, making it a highly cost-effective climate policy in ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Allocating land for housing in Tanzania

The economics of greenfield urban planning...Read more...

Journal article

The Energy Journal:

Natural gas vehicles: consequences for fuel markets and the environment

Policies to adopt cleaner fuels have become increasingly important, but their impacts on incumbent fuel prices and resulting greenhouse gas emissions remain unclear. We use a panel dataset on weekly prices at the gas sta...Read more...

Chapter

Immigration, diversity and innovation in cities and regions

in A Research Agenda for Migration and Innovation

This chapter investigates the interplay between immigrant diversity and innovation, emphasizing the urban and regional dimensions where these effects are most pronounced. Cities and urban areas are pivotal to the generat...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Monopsony and employer misoptimization explain why wages bunch at round numbers

We show that administrative hourly wage data exhibit considerable bunching at round numbers. We run two experiments randomizing wages around $0.10 and $1.00 to experimentally measure left-digit bias for identical tasks o...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Monopsony and the wage effects of migration

If labour markets are competitive, migration can only affect native wages via marginal products. But under imperfect competition, migration may also increase wage mark-downs ? if firms have greater monopsony power over m...Read more...

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...

CEP discussion paper

Evaluating transport improvements in spatial equilibrium

The recent development of quantitative urban models provides a new set of tools for evaluating transport improvements. Conventional cost-benefit analyses are typically undertaken in partial equilibrium. In contrast, quan...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

A practical guide to shift-share instruments

A recent econometric literature shows two distinct paths for identification with shift-share instruments, leveraging either many exogenous shifts or exogenous shares. We present the core logic of both paths and practical...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Industrial Organization:

VAT pass-through and competition: evidence from the Greek islands

We examine how competition affects VAT pass-through in isolated oligopolistic markets as defined by the Greek islands. Using daily gasoline prices and a difference-in-differences methodology, we investigate how changes i...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

Ethnic minority and migrant pay gaps over the life-cycle

It is well-known that ethnic minority and migrant workers have lower average pay than the White UK-born workforce. However, we know much less about how these gaps vary over the life-cycle because of data limitations. We ...Read more...

Journal article

PloS ONE:

Agglomeration costs limit sustainable innovation in cities in developing economies

Theory and evidence from developed economies suggests that innovation activities benefit from agglomeration economies associated with urban economic density. However, despite the fact that eighteen of the world?s top twe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Quantitative urban economics

This paper reviews recent quantitative urban models. These models are sufficiently rich to capture observed features of the data, such as many asymmetric locations and a rich geography of the transport network. Yet these...Read more...

Government consultation

Scottish parliament: Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee

Christian Hilber gives evidence to the Housing inquiry....Read more...

Journal article

World Development:

Institutional transition: Social cohesion and demand for land titles in urban Tanzania

In much of urban Africa, demand for statutory property rights remains low even when governments coordinate land titling programmes and reduce the costs of registration. This paper studies the Residential Licence programm...Read more...

Blog

Centre for cities:

City Talks: Why we are seeing a boom in urban economics research (Podcast)

We are constantly finding out more about where people live and work, how people move around, where businesses choose to locate, and where people spend their money - all of which adds more depth to our picture of cities. ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Valuing consumption services as technology transforms accessibility: Evidence from Beijing

Home delivery reduced the value of cities as locations to access variety in durable consumption goods. Food delivery services (FDS) are doing the same for restaurants. Home-streaming of sports or home-delivered restauran...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Literature:

Temporary employment in markets with frictions

Temporary employment has spiked in OECD countries over the last 40 years and is now a common feature of their labor market landscape. A large body of empirical literature examines the spread of temporary employment, but ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Regional Science:

Within-city roads and urban growth

In this paper we study the role of within-city roads layout in fostering city growth. Within-city roads networks have not been studied extensively in economics although they are essential to facilitate human interactions...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Asymmetric pass-through and competition

We study the retail price pass-through of four major tax changes in petroleum products using daily pricing data from gas stations on small Greek islands. We find that (i) the pass-through of the tax hikes is five times h...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Identifying agglomeration shadows: long-run evidence from ancient ports

We examine "agglomeration shadows" that emerge around large cities, which discourage some economic activities in nearby areas. Identifying agglomeration shadows is complicated, however, by endogenous city formation and "...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Putting quantitative models to the test: an application to Trump's trade war

The primary motivation behind quantitative modeling in international trade and many other fields is to shed light on the economic consequences of policy changes. To help assess and potentially strengthen the credibility ...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

The linear algebra of economic geography models

We provide sufficient statistics for nominal and real wage exposure to productivity shocks in a constant elasticity economic geography model. These exposure measures summarize the first-order general equilibrium elastici...Read more...

Journal article

Town Planning Review:

Pushing water uphill: containment policies doomed to fail

London has had a green belt for seventy years making it the `canary in the coal mine? for `zero land take?. Because of strong demand for housing space, rising prosperity underlies rising urban land demand so rigid physic...Read more...

Journal article

Econometrica:

A Comment on: "Walras-Bowley Lecture: Market power and wage inequality" by Shubhdeep Deb, Jan Eeckhout, Aseem Patel, and Lawrence Warren

A burgeoning literature in labor economics is focused on modeling employer labor market power, generally finding nontrivial estimates of monopsony power. A smaller literature also simultaneously incorporates product mark...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics:

Measuring absolute income mobility: lessons from North America and Europe

We use linked parent-child administrative data for five countries in North America and Europe, as well as detailed survey data for two more, to investigate methodological challenges in the estimation of absolute income m...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Immigration, female labour supply and local cultural norms

We study the local evolution of female labour supply and cultural norms in West Germany in reaction to the sudden presence of East Germans who migrated to the West after reunification. These migrants grew up with high ra...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy :

Local retail prices, product variety, and neighborhood change

We study how local grocery markets within a city are affected by changes in housing markets. Our empirical strategy exploits a shift in the spatial distribution of construction activity induced by a large-scale, place-ba...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Environmental Psychology:

Working memory and fluid intelligence are differentially related to categories of urban fabric in older adults: Results from the Berlin aging study

Urbanization is Globally increasing at a rapid rate but its consequences for mental health, including cognitive functioning, are not well understood. In particular, little is known about the effects of different morpholo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The social footprint of globalization: towards the introduction of strategic industries in quantitative trade models

We argue that our understanding of industrial policy in the presence of 'strategic' industries that exert positive externalities on the national economy may benefit from an extension of quantitative general equilibrium t...Read more...

Journal article

PLoS ONE :

Access to digital finance: Equity crowdfunding across countries and platforms

Financing entrepreneurship spurs innovation and economic growth. Digital financial platforms that crowdfund equity for entrepreneurs have emerged globally, yet they remain poorly understood. We model equity crowdfunding ...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Unbundling tenure security and demand for property rights: evidence from urban Tanzania

Rapid urbanisation in sub-Saharan Africa occurs with little land registration, and government-led regularisation schemes often find limited uptake of title deeds by residents. In theory, there could be private and public...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Urban-biased structural change

Economic activity in high-income countries has shifted towards services and away from manufacturing. But research remains scant on the patterns of structural change within countries across urban and rural areas. Using mi...Read more...

Journal article

Spatial Economic Analysis:

The social footprint of globalisation: towards the introduction of strategic industries in quantitative trade models

We argue that our understanding of industrial policy in the presence of `strategic? industries that exert positive externalities on the national economy may benefit from an extension of quantitative general equilibrium t...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

American Economic Review :

The impact of regulation on innovation

We present a framework that can be used to assess the equilibrium impact of regulation on endogenous innovation with heterogeneous firms. We implement this model using French firm-level panel data, where there is a sharp...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

The evolution of work from home

Full days worked at home account for 28 percent of paid workdays among Americans 20?64 years old, as of mid-2023. That's about four times the 2019 rate and ten times the rate in the mid-1990s. We first explain why the bi...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Unraveling firms: demand, productivity and markups heterogeneity

We develop a novel framework that simultaneously allows recovering heterogeneity in demand, quantity TFP and markups across firms while leaving the correlation between the three dimensions unrestricted. We accomplish thi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

VAT pass-through and competition: evidence from the Greek Islands

We examine how competition affects VAT pass-through in isolated oligopolistic markets as defined by the Greek islands. Using daily gasoline prices and a difference-in-differences methodology, we investigate how changes i...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

The local labor market effects of modern manufacturing capital: evidence from France

Using an event study methodology and comprehensive micro data from the French manufacturing sector, we analyze the local labor market effects of investments in modern manufacturing capital, including modern automation te...Read more...

Chapter

The What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth: some lessons from the first ten years

in The What Works Centres: lessons and insights from an evidence movement

What can policy do to increase local economic growth? This is a question that has challenged decision makers and academics for decades. It's also a fundamental question today, when the UK government has made economic gro...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Quantitative urban models: from theory to data

Economic activity is highly unevenly distributed within cities, as reflected in the concentration of economic functions in specific locations, such as finance in the Square Mile in London. The extent to which this concen...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Studies:

Inclusive innovation in cities: from buzzword to policy

'Inclusive innovation' has become an increasingly important subnational policy agenda. This paper reviews this agenda, critiques its current usage and presents a new framework for how the concept can be applied by city g...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Progressive cities: urban-rural polarisation of social values and economic development around the world

In contrast to the conservative values of rural populations, cities are often seen as bulwarks of more tolerant, liberal and progressive values. This urban-rural divide in values has become one of the major fault lines i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The economics of cities: from theory to data

Economic activity is highly unevenly distributed within cities, as reflected in the concentration of economic functions in specific locations, such as finance in the Square Mile in London. The extent to which this concen...Read more...

Chapter

Housing policy and affordable housing

in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance

Lack of affordable housing is a growing and often primary policy concern in cities throughout the world. The main underlying cause for the "affordability crisis," which has been mounting for decades, is a combination of ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics :

Competition and pass-through: evidence from isolated markets

We measure how pass-through varies with competition in isolated oligopolistic markets with captive consumers. Using daily pricing data from gas stations on small Greek islands, we study how unanticipated and exogenous ch...Read more...

Blog

UCLA Housing Voice:

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...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

Introduction to the special issue: "Urban economics and history"

Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

History and urban economics

This article reviews recent literature using insights from history to answer central questions in urban economics. This area of research has seen rapid growth in the past decade, thanks to new technologies that have made...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

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...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources:

The urban wage premium in imperfect labor markets

Using administrative data for West Germany, this paper investigates whether part of the urban wage premium stems from fierce competition in thick labour markets. We first establish that employers possess less wage-settin...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Incubators, accelerators and urban economic development

We combine theory and evidence on incubator and accelerator programmes and their effects on urban economic development. These structured co-working programmes have grown rapidly. However, a rich descriptive literature re...Read more...

Journal article

Health and Place:

Income-related health inequality in urban China (1991-2015): the role of homeownership and housing conditions

Unprecedented economic growth has been experienced over the several decades worldwide, but such rapid economic growth wasn't accompanied by equally-substantial improvement in health, especially health inequalities betwee...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Critical commentary: The city and the virus

Cities around the world are the epicentres of the coronavirus pandemic: both in the first wave, as the disease spread from East Asia, and now, as many countries enter a third wave of infections. These spatial patterns ar...Read more...

Journal article

Management Science:

Building a productive workforce: the role of structured management practices

In an influential study, Bender et al. [Bender S, Bloom N, Card D, Van Reenen J, Wolter S (2018) Management practices, workforce selection, and productivity. J. Labor Econom. 36(S1):S371-S409] document consistent relatio...Read more...

Journal article

Land Economics:

Urban land use fragmentation and human wellbeing

We study how land use fragmentation affects the life satisfaction of city dwellers. To this end, we calculate fragmentation metrics based on exact geographical coordinates of land use from the European Urban Atlas and of...Read more...

Journal article

Landscape and Urban Planning:

Urban green is more than the absence of city: structural and functional neural basis of urbanicity and green space in the neighbourhood of older adults

The relationship between urbanization, the brain, and human mental health is subject to intensive debate in the current scientific literature. Particularly, since mood and anxiety disorders as well as schizophrenia are k...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Suburbanization in the USA, 1970-2010

The second half of the 20th century saw large-scale suburbanization in the USA, with the median share of residents who work in the county where they live falling from 87% to 71% between 1970 and 2000. We introduce a new ...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

City of dreams no more, a year on: worklessness and active labour market policies in urban India

This report provides key findings from a new field survey to assess the long-term impact of Covid-19 on urban workers in low-income areas of India. The survey took place during February and March 2021, just before the s...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Planning ahead for better beighborhoods: long-run evidence from Tanzania

Africa?s demand for urban housing is soaring, even as it faces a proliferation of slums. In this setting, can modest infrastructure investments in greenfield areas where people subsequently build their own houses facilit...Read more...

Blog

Grantham Institute blogs:

The answer to housing's stubborn carbon emissions problem: green offsets

Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber propose 'green offsets' to reduce property taxes in a way that is strictly scaled to energy efficiency, as a simple intervention to address the UK's urgent need to reduce its residentia...Read more...

External report

Pancakes to pyramids: city form to promote sustainable growth (English)

Towns and cities are economic and social microcosms in which large numbers of people and firms interact. These interactions largely shape how a city looks, how it functions, and how it grows. But how exactly does this ma...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Organizing global supply chains: input-output linkages and vertical integration

We study how the technological importance of inputs?measured by cost shares?is related to the decision to ?make? or ?buy? that input. Using detailed French international trade data and an instrumental variable approach b...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Why housing is built in flood-prone coastal areas

Despite the higher susceptibility to floods and a growing climate crisis, more than 10% of the world's population live in low-elevation coastal zones, and that percentage is growing. Yatang Lin, Thomas McDermott and Guy ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The local economic impacts of regeneration projects: evidence from UK's single regeneration budget

Many governments aim to improve the labour market outcomes of people living in deprived areas through "place-making" initiatives. Economists are often sceptical about the effectiveness of such policies, but empirical evi...Read more...

CentrePiece article

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...

CentrePiece article

In brief... City of dreams no more: Covid-19 in urban India

The pandemic has decimated livelihoods in urban India and created a new underclass of workers who are being pushed into poverty. A CEP report by Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli calls for a national w...Read more...

Journal article

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization:

In-house and arms length: productivity heterogeneity and variation in organizational form

This paper analyzes firm boundaries in the US hotel industry. Hotel properties of a given brand are often managed either by a chain employee or by a franchisee. We document that brand properties with the lowest and the h...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The use of designer reputation to build tall in London

Height exemptions are made easier when a world-famous architect is involved, but the process carries hidden costs, writes Paul Cheshire....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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...

CEP discussion paper

The crisis and job guarantees in urban India

This paper uses a new field survey of low-wage areas of urban India to show that employment and earnings were decimated by the lockdown resulting from the Covid-19 crisis. It examines workers? desire for a job guarantee ...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Will coronavirus cause a big city exodus?

Big cities thrive because of the economic and social benefits of proximity - but proximity also helps to spread Covid-19. Does this mean an end to the big city revival of recent years? Much will depend on how quickly we ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Land tenure and land-use in a developing city: a quantitative spatial model applied to Kampala, Uganda

Land rights and tenure systems are an important factor behind poor housing and inefficient land-use in developing country cities. In Kampala, Uganda, four systems of land tenure coexist, allowing a detailed study of the ...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

City of dreams no more: the impact of Covid-19 on urban workers in India

Many developing economies have large informal sectors and growing urban youth populations, who lack basic social protections at work. The CEP surveyed 8,500 workers aged 18 to 40 in urban India to understand their experi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Globalisation and urban polarisation

External trade affects the internal spatial structure of an economy, promoting growth in some cities or regions and decline in others. Internal adjustment to these changes has often proved to be extremely slow and painfu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Gender gaps and the structure of local labor markets

In this paper we discuss some strands of the recent literature on the evolution of gender gaps and their driving forces. We will revisit key stylized facts about gender gaps in employment and wages in a few high-income c...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Place-based policies and spatial disparities across European cities

Spatial disparities in income and worklessness across areas of the European Union are profound and persistent. Concerns about these disparities and the appropriate policy response are longstanding. Two trends have re-ene...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A survey of gender gaps through the lens of the industry structure and local labor markets

In this paper we discuss some strands of the recent literature on the evolution of gender gaps and their driving forces. We will revisit key stylized facts about gender gaps in employment and wages in a few high-income c...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics:

Flooded cities

Does economic activity move away from areas that are at high risk of recurring shocks? We examine this question in the context of floods, which displaced more than 650 million people worldwide in the last 35 years. We st...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

Competition and pass-through: evidence from isolated markets

We measure how pass-through varies with competition in isolated oligopolistic markets with captive consumers. Using daily pricing data from gas stations on small Greek islands, we study how unanticipated and exogenous ch...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Retail shocks and city structure

This paper evaluates the consequences of opening out-of-town big-boxes on the commercial structure of cities. I use a discontinuity in a commercial regulation in Spain that restricts the entry of big-box stores in munici...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Dirty density: air quality and the density of American cities

We study whether urban density affects the exposure of city dwellers to ambient air pollution using satellite-derived measures of air quality for the contiguous United States. For identification, we rely on an instrument...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The urban wage premium in imperfect labour markets

Using administrative data for West Germany, this paper investigates whether part of the urban wage premium stems from fierce competition in thick labour markets. We first establish that employers possess less wage-settin...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technology, market structure and the gains from trade

We study the gains from trade in a new model with oligopolistic competition, firm heterogeneity, and innovation. Lowering trade costs reduces markups on domestic sales but increases markups on export sales, as firms do n...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Housing Economics:

Institutional settings and urban sprawl: evidence from Europe

This article explores the role of institutional settings in determining spatial variation in urban sprawl across Europe. We first synthesize the emerging literature that links land use policies and local fiscal incentive...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Housing Economics:

Housing in Europe: a different continent ? a continent of differences

This article provides the introduction to the special issue on `Housing in Europe: a different continent ? a continent of differences? in the Journal of Housing Economics in 2018. Europe is a large continent with a long ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of International Economics:

Globalization and urban polarization

External trade affects the internal spatial structure of an economy, promoting growth in some cities or regions and decline in others. Internal adjustment to these changes has often proved to be extremely slow and painfu...Read more...