Field evidence suggests that agents belonging to the same group tend to behave similarly, i.e., behavior exhibits social interaction effects. Testing for such effects raises severe identification problems. We conduct an experiment that avoids these problems. The main design feature is that each...

We propose a method to estimate the capitalized value of the architectural design quality of a neighbourhood. Our economic design premium is identified by spatially differentiating property prices and design quality within neighbourhoods and comparing the differences across neighbourhoods. We...

A number of prominent studies examine the long-run effects of neighborhood attributes on children by leveraging variation in neighborhood exposure through household moves. How-ever, much neighborhood change comes in place rather than through moving. Using an urban economic geography model as a...

This paper uses an own built dataset on the history of universities in Italy during 1861-2010 to estimate neighbourhood effects in the local supply of higher education, and incorporate them in a welfare analysis. We implement an instrumental variables approach that exploits initial conditions in...

Using longitudinal data based on administrative registers for the population of Danish men we develop a model which accounts for the joint earnings dynamics of siblings and youth community peers. We are the first to decompose the sibling correlation of permanent earnings into family and...

Situations where independent agents need to align their activities to achieve individually and socially beneficial outcomes are abundant, reaching from everyday situations like fixing a time for a meeting to global problems like climate change agreements. Often such situations can be described...

In this paper, we provide the first evidence of the effect of the shift to remote work on crime. We examine the impact of the rise of working from home (WFH) on neighborhood-level burglary rates, exploiting geographically granular crime data and a neighborhood WFH measure. We document three key...

This paper proposes a novel empirical strategy to estimate the causal effects of federal "redlining" - the mapping and grading of US neighborhoods by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC). In the late 1930s, a federal agency created color-coded maps to summarize the financial risk of granting...

What are the long run consequences of planning and providing basic infrastructure in neighborhoods, where people build their own homes? We study "Sites and Services" projects implemented in seven Tanzanian cities during the 1970s and 1980s, half of which provided infrastructure in previously...

Cooperativeness among genetically unrelated humans remains a major puzzle in the social sciences. We explore the causal impact of physical distance on willingness to help. In a field setting, participants decide about supporting local refugees at the dispense of money to themselves. We vary...