Driven by growing internationalisation and high unemployment in Europe concerns about competition between regions and cities and it's consequences for economic and social standards are omnipresent. In their strive for "competitiveness" and a high position of their city in an "European City...

GDP growth is often measured poorly for countries and rarely measured at all for cities. We propose a readily available proxy: satellite data on lights at night. Our statistical framework uses light growth to supplement existing income growth measures. The framework is applied to countries with...

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 spatial pattern of house prices and photos I identify the value of urbanity in...

We construct a unique data set to analyze whether or not a large temporary shock had an impact on German city growth and city size distribution. Following recent work by Davis and Weinstein (2001) on Japan, we take the strategic bombing of German cities during WWII as our example of such a...

A structural model of entry and fiscal policy is presented. It shows that taxation of variable production costs can increase product prices, lower competition, and reduce the availability of new products in small markets. The model's test is based on a unique nationwide fiscal experiment. We...

Die öffentliche Diskussion über die Struktur des Lebensmitteleinzelhandels in Deutschland ist durch die Sorge über ein hohes Niveau (bzw. die weitere Zunahme) der Konzentration auf Unternehmensebene sowie eine Abnahme der Zahl der Verkaufsstätten geprägt. Die vorliegende Arbeit sucht nach...

This is the first paper to investigate the determinants of the demand for medical care in the People's Republic of China. It uses a data set that consists of detailed characteristics of 6407 urban households, a continuous measure of health care spending, and price. A two-part model and a...