Can the provision of public goods strengthen the fiscal capacity of governments in developing countries and move them toward an equilibrium of widespread tax compliance? We present evidence of the impact of local public infrastructure on tax compliance, leveraging a large public investment...

The commonly-used satellite images of nighttime lights fail to capture the true brightness of most cities. We show that night lights are a reliable proxy for economic activity at the city level, provided they are first corrected for top-coding. We present a stylized model of urban luminosity and...

Since 1980, economic growth in the U.S. has been fastest in its largest cities. We show that a group of skill- and information-intensive service industries are responsible for all of this new urban bias in recent growth. We then propose a simple explanation centered around the interaction of...

We examine the effect of a large-scale administrative reorganization in China, where counties are annexed into cities to accommodate urban growth. We present a simple model to illustrate how this annexation may affect firm entry decisions and in turn land market outcomes. Using nationwide data...

This paper shows how a world price shock can increase the likelihood that democratization must be used to resolve the threat of revolution. Initially, a ruling elite may be able to use trade policy to maintain political stability. But a world price shock can push the country into a situation...

This research advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that interpersonal population diversity has contributed significantly to the emergence, prevalence, recurrence, and severity of intrasocietal conflicts. Exploiting an exogenous source of variations in population diversity across...

We introduce distributive justice into a simple model of growth and distribution. Two groups ("classes") of otherwise identical, capital-rich and capital-poor individuals ("capitalists") and ("workers") are in conflict over factor (labour-capital) shares. Capitalists' (workers') ideal labour...

This paper develops a model with an endogenous number of cities to explore whether local governments establish the optimal city size when key activities in the city are associated with emissions that harm consumers. In contrast to extant research, our model is fully micro-founded with respect to...

The main aim of this paper is to assess whether there is a statistically significant environmental impact of cities within European countries. Second, starting from the estimated environmental impact of cities within European countries, the paper investigates whether cross-country variation can...

In this paper we show that the double Pareto lognormal (DPLN) parameterization provides an excellent fit to the overall US city size distribution, regardless of whether "cities" are administratively defined Census places or economically defined area clusters. We then consider an economic model...