Many governments subsidize regional rail service as an alternative to road traffic. This paper assesses whether increases in service frequency reduce road traffic externalities. We exploit differences in service frequency growth by procurement mode following a railway reform in Germany to...

We estimate the effects of major roads and public transit on the growth of major cities in the US between 1980 and 2000. We find that a 10% increase in a city’s stock of roads causes about a 2% increase in its population and employment and a small decrease in its share of poor households over...

We investigate the relationship between interstate highways and highway vehicle kilometers traveled (vkt) in US cities. We find that vkt increases proportionately to highways and identify three important sources for this extra vkt: an increase in driving by current residents; an increase in...

We formulate and estimate a structural model for travel demand, in which users have heterogeneous preferences and make their transport decisions considering the network congestion. A key component in the model is that users have incomplete information about the preferences of other users in the...

We evaluate the role that cities play on individual productivity in China. First, we show that location explains a large share of nominal wage disparities. Second, even after controlling for individual and firms characteristics and instrumenting city characteristics, the estimated elasticity of...