The received economic wisdom is that cities are too big and that public policy should limit their sizes. This wisdom assumes, unrealistically, that city sites are homogeneous, migration is unfettered, land is given freely to incoming migrants, and federal taxes are neutral. Should those...

The share of metropolitan residents living in central cities declined dramatically from 1950 to 2000. We argue that cities would have lost even further ground if not for demographic trends such as renewed immigration, delayed child bearing, and a decline in the share of households headed by...

Affluent towns often deliver high-quality public services to their residents. I estimate the willingness to pay to live in a high-income suburb, above and beyond the demand of wealthy neighbors, by measuring changes in housing prices across city-suburban borders as the income disparity between...