We study a simple model of commuting subsidies with two transport modes. City residents choose where to live and which mode to use. When all land is owned by city residents, one group gains from subsidies what the other loses. With absentee landownership, city residents as a group gain at the...

This paper analyzes subsidies for intracity and intercity commuting in an urban economics framework with two cities and agglomeration externalities, where workers may commute within and between cities. First, commuting subsidies serve to internalize agglomeration externalities: Intracity...

This paper analyzes the relationship between spatial mobility and social mobility. It develops a two-skill-type spatial equilibrium model of two regions with location preferences where each region consists of an urban area which is home to workplaces and residences and an exclusively residential...

We study the political economy of commuting subsidies in a model of a mono-centric city with two income classes. Depending on housing demand and transport costs, either the rich or the poor live in the central city and the other group in the suburbs. Commuting subsidies increase the net income...

This paper studies the effectiveness of building height limits as a policy to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It shows that building height limits lead to urban sprawl and higher emissions from commuting. On the other hand, aggregate housing consumption may decrease which reduces emissions...

We study the optimal and equilibrium size of cities in a city system model with environmental pollution. Pollution is related to city size through the effect of population on production, commuting, and housing consumption. With symmetric cities, if pollution is local or per capita pollution...

We use panel data from Germany to analyze the effect of population density on urban air pollution (nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and ozone). To address unobserved heterogeneity and omitted variables, we present long difference/fixed effects estimates and instrumental variables estimates,...

A large literature has claimed that higher political participation increases welfare spending. In this paper, I review this literature. I study the theoretical link between participation and redistributive spending. Then, I survey the empirical literature on the link between education, income...

This paper analyses the effect of federalism on fertility and growth. In a model with human capital accumulation and endogenous fertility, two regimes of education finance are compared: central and local education. Using numerical simulation, I find that local education finance yields higher...

This paper shows that subsidy competition may be efficiency enhancing. We model a subsidy game among two asymmetric regions in a new trade model, where capital can freely move among regions, but capital rewards are repatriated. We study subsidy competition, starting from an equilibrium where the...