Average earnings vary widely across the regions of Britain, a fact that has prompted many decades of policies aimed at reducing regional disparities. But as Henry Overman and Steve Gibbons demonstrate, such variation reveals little, especially if we ignore regional differences in the cost of...

The skill gap in geographical mobility is entirely driven by workers who report moving for a new job. A natural explanation lies in the large expected surplus accruing to skilled job matches. Just as large surpluses ease the frictions which impede job search in general, they also help overcome...

Higher ability workers benefit more from bigger cities while housing costs there are higher for everyone, and yet there is little sorting on ability. A possible explanation is that young individuals have an imperfect assessment of their ability, and, when they learn about it, early decisions...

In 1997 Rwanda introduced a re-settlement policy for refugees displaced during previous conflicts. We exploit geographic variation in the speed of implementation of this policy to investigate the impact of conflict-induced displacement and the re-settlement policy on household agricultural...

The paper investigates the relationship between underground activities and financial deepening. The access to external finance requires entrepreneurs to disclose credible information through formal documentation. This requirement may be impossible to oblige to for many informal producers who...

where labour considerations no longer matter, the location decisions are expected to depend not only on a comparison of standard-of-living between the origin and host countries, but should also be affected by the strength of family relationships. Assuming that migrants derive some satisfaction...

We develop a methodology for identifying departures from relative factor price equality across regions that is valid under general assumptions about production, markets and factors. Application of this methodology to the United States reveals substantial and increasing deviations in relative...

The striking geographical concentration of economic activities suggests that there are substantial benefits toagglomeration. However, the nature of those benefits remains unclear. In this paper we take advantage of a newdataset to quantify the role of one of the main contenders - the matching of...

There are large disparities between the achievements, behaviour and aspirations of children in different neighbourhoods - but does this mean that the place where you grow up determines your later life outcomes? Steve Gibbons, Olmo Silva and Felix Weinhardt outline the findings of a series of CEP...

There are large disparities between the achievements, behaviour and aspirations of children in different neighbourhoods - but does this mean that the place where you grow up determines your later life outcomes? Steve Gibbons, Olmo Silva and Felix Weinhardt outline the findings of a series of CEP...