A Melitz-style model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms is integrated into a simple New Economic Geography model to show that the standard assumption of identical firms is neither necessary nor innocuous. We show that re-locating to the big region is most attractive for the...

When economic activity is concentrated over space or over time, it is more efficient. Most production occurs in geographic hot spots, and most production occurs between 9 and 12 in the morning and 1 to 5 in the afternoon on weekdays. The thick-market efficiencies that encourage the concentration...

The distribution of firms in space is far from uniform. Some locations host the most productive large firms, while others barely attract any. In this paper, I study the sorting of heterogeneous firms across locations and analyze policies designed to attract firms to particular regions...

We identify negative spillovers exerted by large, successful manufacturing plants on other local production facilities in China. A short-lived alliance between the U.S.S.R. and China led to the construction of 150 "Million-Rouble plants" in the 1950s. Our identification strategy exploits the...

We provide sufficient statistics for nominal and real wage exposure to productivity shocks in a constant elasticity economic geography model. These exposure measures summarize the first-order general equilibrium elasticity of nominal and real wages in each location with respect to productivity...

In this paper, I study the effect of economic integration with the United States on state-industry employment growth in Mexico. I disentangle the effects of two opposing forces on regional labor demand: transport-cost considerations, which, all else equal, encourage firms to relocate their...

We examine "agglomeration shadows" that emerge around large cities, which discourage some economic activities in nearby areas. Identifying agglomeration shadows is complicated, however, by endogenous city formation and "wave interference" that we show in simulations. We use the locations of...

This paper studies the evolution of China's production and trade patterns during its integration into the global economy. We document and explain new facts concerning changes in production and exports at the industry and firm levels using microdata and a quantitative Ricardian and...

We measure the importance of increasing returns to scale and trade in medical services. Using Medicare claims data, we document that "imported" medical care -- services produced by a medical provider in a different region -- constitute about one-fifth of US healthcare consumption. Larger regions...

We quantify and explain the firm responses and worker impacts of foreign demand shocks to domestic production networks. To capture that firms can be indirectly exposed to such shocks by buying from or selling to domestic firms that import or export, we use Belgian data with information on both...