We analyze the impact of fiscal decentralization on U.S. county population, employment, and real income growth. Our findings suggest that government organization matters for local economic growth, but that the impacts vary by government unit and by economic indicator. We find that single-purpose...

This paper explores the mobility patterns of elder workers in the United States, with a focus on mobility to and from work (e.g., commuting) across metropolitan areas and metropolitan population sizes. Using detailed time diaries from the American Time Use Survey for the years 2003-2018,...

Discussion on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on African Americans has been at center stage since the outbreak of the epidemic in the United States. To present day, however, lack of race-disaggregated individual data has prevented a rigorous assessment of the extent of this phenomenon...

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...

We consider taxation by a utilitarian government in the presence of heterogeneous locations within a country. We show that a utilitarian government never equalizes after-tax incomes, even when it can impose group-specific lump-sum taxes. If migration is impossible, a utilitarian government may...

We propose a new nonparametric approach to estimate the production function for housing. Our estimation treats output as a latent variable and relies on the first-order condition for profit maximisation with respect to non-land inputs by competitive house builders. For parcels of a given size,...

The issue of land inequality has garnered renewed interest in development literature due to its potential impact on the welfare of smallholder farmers. Poverty reduction is a crucial sustainable development goal, and a clearer understanding of the factors contributing to poverty is essential for...

Despite the intensive efforts made by economists to examine regional income inequality in China, limited attention has been paid to disentangle the contribution of regional price differentials. This paper examines regional price differential in urban China over the period 1986 to 2001. Spatial...

Economic regions, such as urban agglomerations, face external demand and price shocks that produce income risk. Workers in large and diversified agglomerations may benefit from reduced wage volatility, while firms may outsource the production of intermediate goods and realize benefits from...

This paper takes a fresh look at child poverty at the neighbourhood level in the three metropolitan regions of Sweden using unique data for 1990, 1996 and 2002. We find that the number of neighbourhoods with high child poverty rates is much larger in 2002 than in 1990, but also that most poor...