In response to private insurers' postwar withdrawal from urban neighborhoods, roughly half of US states developed programs in the late 1960s that offered residual property insurance to property owners denied in the private market. These plans, known as Fair Access to Insurance Requirements...

Small firms dominated the American economy in the nineteenth century, and still dominate in many developing economies today. This paper tests whether geographic market segmentation due to underdeveloped intracity transportation technology precludes the emergence of large retail/wholesale stores....

How does a relaxation of migration restrictions affect labor-market outcomes of incumbent migrants? In this paper, we answer this question by studying a significant internal migration policy change in China: the 2014 hukou reform. This reform substantially removed the migration barriers of...

This paper documents how the decisions of young adults to return to live with their parents (‘boomerang') may contribute to low or declining levels of out-migration from weak labor markets. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and a locational choice model, we find that the likelihood of a...

This paper documents a linkage between two empirical trends: the low levels of out-migration from weak labor markets, and the increasing rate at which young adults return to live with their parents (‘boomerang'). Using the American Community Survey, we show that boomerang moves are more likely...

In response to private insurers' postwar withdrawal from urban neighborhoods, roughly half of US states developed programs in the late 1960s that offered residual property insurance to property owners denied in the private market. These plans, known as Fair Access to Insurance Requirements...

How does an area’s proximity to big cities affect its growth? Using county-level data from China for 1990–2020, we find that an area’s being close to big cities (in the 150–250 km range) reduces the decadal population growth rate by 2.8–3.8 percentage points. Initial agricultural...

What are the welfare implications of placing restrictions on internal migration? Given externalities in location choices, the answer is ambiguous. This paper empirically examines what is presumably the largest government intervention in internal migration in human history--the Hukou system in...

We estimate the causal effect of the 2003 SARS epidemic on firm-level exports in China. We combine a patient-level data set with a micro trade data set between 2000 and 2006. We construct two measures of exposure to SARS. The first measure is based on the exposure to SARS patients in firms'...