The neoclassical growth accounting model used by the BLS to sort out the contributions of the various sources of growth in the U.S. economy accords a relatively small role to education. This result seems at variance with the revolution in information technology and the emergence of the...

Leading empiricists and theorists of cities have recently argued that the generation and exchange of ideas must play a more central role in the analysis of cities. This paper develops the first system of cities model with costly idea exchange as the agglomeration force. Our model replicates a...

In this chapter we analyze immigration and its effect on urban and regional economies focusing on productivity and labor markets. While immigration policies are typically national, the effects of international migrants are often more easily identified on local economies. The reason is that their...

One approach to urban areas emphasizes the existence of certain immutable relationships, such as Zipf's or Gibrat's Law. An alternative view is that urban change reflects individual responses to changing tastes or technologies. This paper examines almost 200 years of regional change in the U.S....

The growing use of on-line educational content and related video services has changed the way people access education, share knowledge, and possibly make life decisions. In this paper, we characterize how video content affects individual decision-making and willingness to share in the context of...

We develop a new dataset using UNESCO source materials on the location of nearly 15,000 universities in about 1,500 regions across 78 countries, some dating back to the 11th Century. We estimate fixed effects models at the sub-national level between 1950 and 2010 and find that increases in the...

We present a theory of the organization of work in an economy where knowledge is an essential input in production: a knowledge economy. In this economy a continuum of agents with heterogeneous skills must choose how much knowledge to acquire and may produce on their own or in organizations. Our...

To identify the determinants of cross-country disparities in personal computer and Internet penetration, we examine a panel of 161 countries over the 1999-2001 period. Our candidate variables include economic variables (income per capita, years of schooling, illiteracy, trade openness),...

This paper directs attention at the globalization of knowledge and knowledge creation as the fundamental global driver of economic outcomes in today's information economy. It documents the globalization of knowledge and spread of scientific research from advanced to developing countries and...