Are developing-world cities engines of opportunities for low-wage earners? In this study, we track a cohort of young low-income workers in Brazil for thirteen years to explore the contribution of factors such as industrial structure and skill segregation on upward income mobility. We find that...

This paper estimates the local welfare impacts of road maintenance investments. We instrument road quality exploiting Indonesia's two-step budgeting process for allocating funding to local road authorities. Using comprehensive data on road quality from 1990-2007, we find that better roads help...

We study local carbon policy to address the consequences of climate change. Standard analysis suggests that the social cost of carbon determines optimal carbon policy. We start by using the spatial integrated assessment model in Cruz and Rossi-Hansberg (2021) to measure the local social monetary...

We analyze the effect of Colombia's ambitious "Free Housing" program on children's educational outcomes. The program was generous, giving free housing to beneficiaries in desirable areas. We evaluate the program by leveraging housing lotteries and linking applicants to their children. We find...

This paper examines the impact of roads on structural transformation and business composition theoretically and empirically. We develop a two-sector model of regional trade with endogenous firm entry that highlights two opposing forces. \textit{Ceteris paribus} lower trade costs in...

We examine how one of the largest U.S. place-based economic development programs, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) of 1988, with annual revenues in excess of \$40 billion, affects local firm total employment and sales through direct channels and through IGRA's effects on adjacent...

This article examines the risks faced by China's real estate sector within its distinct hybrid economy, which combines market mechanisms with comprehensive state planning and government intervention. The real estate sector holds particular importance as land sale revenues are a crucial source of...

The social costs of pollution and climate change hinge critically on humans' ability to adapt. Based on transaction records from the world's largest payment network, this research compiles daily travel flows and documents that China's rapid expansion of high-speed railways (HSR) facilitates the...

The returns to face-to-face interactions are of central importance to understanding the determinants of agglomeration. However, the existing literature studying patterns of geographic proximity in patent citations or industrial co-location has struggled to disentangle the benefits of...

The sharing economy for a wide range of goods and services is expanding across the world. To direct the benefits from sharing capital services towards small-scale producers, governments in the developing world are increasingly intervening in fast-growing mechanization rental markets. However,...