Equilibria and optima generally differ in imperfectly competitive markets. While this is well understood theoretically, it is unclear how large the welfare distortions are in the aggregate economy. Do they matter quantitatively? To answer this question, we develop a multi-sector monopolistic...

We combine census and establishment-level data for 2001-2017 to study the impact of mass layoffs of big manufacturing plants on city-level population and its composition in Canada. We find that manufacturing plant closures and downsizing lead to a decline in subsequent population growth,...

Using micro-level commodity flow data and micro-geographic plant-level data, we construct industry-specific ad valorem trucking rate series and measures of geographic concentration to provide evidence on the relationship between transport costs and agglomeration. We find that low transport cost...

Our objective is threefold. First, we explain how to estimate transport costs and the geographic concentration of industries using trucking microdata and geocoded plant-level data. Second, we document that transport costs explain between 25% to 57% of the observed relationship between trade and...

We investigate whether plants inside and outside geographic clusters differ in their resilience to adverse economic shocks. To this end, we develop a bottom-up procedure to delimit clusters using Canadian geo-coded plant-level data. Focussing on the textile and clothing industries and exploiting...

We document geographic concentration patterns of Russian manufacturing using microgeographic data. About 42-52% of 4-digit and 63-75% of 3-digit industries are localized, with a higher share in the European part than in the Asian part. About 70% of 3-digit industry pairs are coagglomerated,...

Quantitative spatial economics (QSE) specifies various components such as preferences, production technology, and frictions for the movement of goods, people, and ideas. Despite the long literature on endogenous location decisions, the question of how these specifications affect resulting...

We study gentrification at a micro-geographic scale using information on residents and businesses in New York from 1990 to 2010. We exploit atypical location decisions of businesses to identify the sectors that usually locate in wealthy neighborhoods but are overrepresented in poor...

A corollary of the First Law of Geography and the Principle of Homophily is that "near things are more similar than distant things." We test that proposition using spatially fine-grained data on thousands of colocation patterns of ethnic groups in the six largest Canadian metropolitan areas. The...

We harness big data to detect prime locations-large clusters of knowledge-based tradable services-in 125 global cities and track changes in the within-city geography of prime service jobs over a century. Historically smaller cities that did not develop early public transit networks are less...