We generalize the formulae for welfare changes by Arkolakis, Costinot, and Rodríguez-Clare (2012) and Melitz and Redding (2014a) to allow for various cardinalizations of the subutility functions for varieties. Despite the same macro restrictions and the same equilibrium allocations, our new...

The Henry George Theorem (HGT) states that, in first-best economies, the fiscal surplus of a city government that finances the Pigouvian subsidies for agglomeration externalities and the costs of local public goods by a 100% tax on land is zero at optimal city sizes. We extend the HGT to...

Many sources of urban agglomeration involve departures from the first-best world. By modeling the microstructure of agglomeration economies, we derive second-best benefit evaluation formulae for urban transportation improvements. Previous work has investigated the same problem, but without...

The Department for Transport in the United Kingdom has been a pioneer in including indirect benefits in the cost–benefit analysis of a transport project. They identify three types of wider impacts, i.e., (1) agglomeration, (2) increased or decreased output in imperfectly competitive markets,...

Many sources of urban agglomeration, such as the gains from variety, bette rmatching, and knowledge creation and diffusion, involve departures from the first-best world. Benefit evaluation of a transportation project must then take into account changes in excess burden along with any direct user...

Many sources of urban agglomeration involve departures from the first-best world. The benefit evaluation of a transportation project must then take into account agglomeration benefits along with any direct user benefits. Using a monopolistic competition model of differentiated intermediate...