It is obvious that holding city population constant, differences in cities across the world areenormous. Urban giants in poor countries are not large using measures such as land area,interior space or value of output. These differences are easily reconciled mathematically aspopulation is the...

This paper presents a novel framework to estimate the elasticity between nighttime lights and quarterly economic activity. The relationship is identified by accounting for varying degrees of measurement errors in nighttime light data across countries. The estimated elasticity is 1.55 for...

Chile's small open economy with significant mismatch between the production and consumption baskets may be represented by three stylized sectors, a commodity sector, a non-commodity tradable sector, and a non-tradable sector. This paper estimates the effect of copper price shocks on mining,...

The paper examines the evolution and drivers of labor force participation in European regions, focusing on the effects of trade and technology. As in the United States, rural regions within European countries saw more pronounced declines (or smaller increases) in participation than urban...

The United States stands out among advanced economies with marked declines in labor force participation. National averages furthermore conceal considerable within-country heterogeneity. This paper explores regional differences to shed light on drivers of participation rates at the state and...

We discuss regional disparities in economic performance and living standards. We first set out some key facts, and provide a conceptual framework to help analyze whether such disparities are efficient, or instead reflect market and/or policy failures. We examine whether policy attempts to reduce...

Past studies on the relationship between electricity consumption and temperature have primarily focused on individual countries. Many regions are understudied as a result of data constraint. This paper studies the relationship on a global scale, overcoming the data constraint by using grid-level...

This paper investigates the asymmetries in trade spillovers from sector-specific technology shocks in China to selected euro area countries. We use a Ricardian-gravity trade model to estimate sectoral competitiveness in individual euro area countries. Simulations on the impact of productivity...

This paper proposes a possible framework for identifying excessive investment. Based on this method, it finds evidence that some types of investment are becoming excessive in China, particularly in inland provinces. In these regions, private consumption has on average become more dependent on...

Do local fiscal multipliers depend on what the government purchases? We find that government purchases of services have larger effects on employment than spending on goods. Industries producing services are more labor-intensive than industries producing goods. This heterogeneity in labor...