Firms are more productive on average in larger cities. Two explanations have been offered: agglomeration economies (larger cities promote interactions that increase productivity) and firm selection (larger cities toughen competition allowing only the most productive to survive). To distinguish...

Spatial wage disparities can result from spatial differences in the skill composition of the workforce, in non-human endowments, and in local interactions. To distinguish between these explanations, we estimate a model of wage determination across local labour markets using a very large panel of...

We study the impact of local taxation on the location and growth of firms. Our empirical methodology pairs establishments across jurisdictional boundaries to estimate the impact of taxation. Our approach improves on existing work as it corrects for unobserved establishment heterogeneity, for...

Measures of urban productivity are typically positively associated with city population. But is this relationship causal? We discuss the main sources of bias in the proper identification of agglomeration effects. We also assess a variety of solutions that have been proposed in the literature to...

Does productivity increase with density? We revisit the issue using French wage and TFP data. To deal with the ‘endogenous quantity of labour’ bias (i.e., urban agglomeration is consequence of high local productivity rather than a cause), we take an instrumental variable approach and...

We develop a new methodology to estimate the elasticity of urban costs with respect to city population using French land price data. Our preferred estimate, which handles a number of estimation concerns, stands at 0.041. Our approach also yields a number of intermediate outputs of independent...

This paper provides descriptive evidence about the distribution of wages and skills in denser and less dense employment areas in France. We confirm that on average, workers in denser areas are more skilled. There is also strong overrepresentation of workers with particularly high and low skills...

In this paper, we propose a job assignment model allowing for a gender difference in access to jobs. Males and females compete for the same job positions. They are primarily interested in the best-paid jobs. A structural relationship of the model can be used to empirically recover the...

There are large spatial disparities in unemployment durations across the 1,300 municipalities in the Paris region (Ile-de-France). In order to characterize these imbalances, we estimate a proportional hazard model stratified by municipality on an exhaustive dataset of all unemployment spells...

Spatial disparities in mortality can result from spatial differences in patient characteristics, treatments, hospital characteristics, and local healthcare market structure. To distinguish between these explanatory factors, we estimate a fexible duration model on stays in hospital for a heart...