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...

This chapter describes how the spatial distribution of economic activity changes as economies develop and grow. We start with the relation between development and rural-urban migration. Moving beyond the coarse rural-urban distinction, we then focus on the continuum of locations in an economy...

This paper examines the relationship between openness and within-country regional inequality across 28 countries over the period 1975-2005. In particular, it tests a) whether increases in trade lead to rising inequalities, b) whether these inequalities recede in time, and c) whether increases in...

Most cities enjoy some autonomy over how they tax their residents, and that autonomy is typically exercised by multiple municipal governments within a given city. In this chapter, we document patterns of city-level taxation across countries, and we review the literature on a number of salient...

We show that space matters in designing the optimal provision of local public goods (LPGs). Geography imposes particular institutional structure of local governments due to the overlapping of market areas associated with different LPGs. The optimum can be decentralized through local governments...

This paper examines strategic behaviour of developers who, through offering different public good packages and revenue/fiscal schemes, compete for residents who are differentiated by income. There is an endogenous determination of numbers and sizes of communities. Developers have an incentive to...

In this Paper we extend the standard human capital earnings function to include dispersion in the rate of return to schooling by treating the return as a random coefficient. One motivation is that if dipping further into the ability distribution has brought about the increase in supply of...

We investigate the determinants of the support for cannabis legalization finding a causal effect of personal experience with cannabis use. Current and past cannabis users are more in favor of legalization. We relate this to self-interest and inside information about potential dangers of cannabis...

Empirical models of differentiated product demand are widely used by both academics and practitioners. While these methods treat carefully the potential endogeneity of price, until recently they have assumed the number and characteristics of the products offered by firms are exogenous. This...

In the Netherlands cannabis use is quasi-legalized. Small quantities of cannabis can be bought in cannabis-shops. We investigate how the distance to the nearest cannabis-shop affects the age of onset of cannabis use. We use a Mixed Proportional Hazard rate framework to take account of observable...