Most cities enjoy some autonomy over how they tax their residents, and that autonomy is typically exercised by multiple …-OECD countries. We show that most cities are highly fragmented: urban areas with more than 500,000 inhabitants are divided into 74 … local jurisdictions on average. The vast majority of these cities are characterized by a central municipality that strongly …

substantial natural resource exports. Countries also attract more FDI if they have more medium-sized cities and primacy is not too … suffer from primacy. However, FDI is attracted if surrounding countries have fewer cities, restrictions on international … trade and low market potential (income per capita). We tentatively conclude that cities are important drivers of FDI and …

scheme would enable large jurisdictions such as cities to provide more public services. Under some conditions, the resulting … budget of cities will exceed that of small towns in per-capita terms. Moreover, in a setting with local capital taxation we … find that an efficient equalization scheme would also allow cities to retain a larger share of own funds. …

We propose a theory of skill mobility across cities. It predicts the well documented city size-wage premium: the wage … distribution in large cities first-order stochastically dominates that in small cities. Yet, because this premium is reflected in … skilled disproportionately sort into the biggest cities, while those with medium skill levels sort into small cities. The …