Should the national government undertake policies aimed at strengthening the economies of particular localities or regions? Agglomeration economies and human capital spillovers suggest that such policies could enhance welfare. However, the mere existence of agglomeration externalities does not...

This paper empirically assesses the incidence and efficiency of Round I of the federal urban Empowerment Zone (EZ) program using confidential microdata from the Decennial Census and the Longitudinal Business Database. To ground our welfare analysis, we develop a heterogeneous agent general...

We present a theory of spatial development. Manufacturing and services firms located in a continuous geographic area choose each period how much to innovate. Firms trade subject to transport costs and technology diffuses spatially across locations. The result is a spatial endogenous growth...

Considerable prior analysis has gone into the study of zoning restrictions on locational choice and on fiscal burdens. The prior work on zoning - particularly fiscal or exclusionary zoning - has provided both inconclusive theoretical results and quite inconsistent empirical support of the...

"Using a comprehensive database of firms in Western and Eastern Europe, we study how the business environment in a country drives the creation of new firms. Our focus is on regulations governing entry. We find entry regulations hamper entry, especially in industries that naturally should have...

Urban economics has traditionally viewed cities as having advantages in production and disadvantages in consumption. We argue that the role of urban density in facilitating consumption is extremely important and understudied. As firms become more mobile, the success of cities hinges more and...

Many interesting elements of supply and demand are starkly observable in professional athletics. Understanding institutional arrangements, competitive balance and labor-management relations requires a basic understanding of sports labor markets and the struggle for control of those markets...

This paper provides a broad overview of recent trends in solid waste and recycling, related public policy issues, and the economics literature devoted to these topics. Public attention to solid waste and recycling has increased dramatically over the past decade both in the United States and in...

Motivated by theories of the firm, which we classify as technological' or organizational,' we analyze the determinants of firm size across industries and across countries in a sample of 15 European countries. We find that, on average, firms facing larger markets are larger. At the industry...

This paper estimates time-varying COVID-19 reproduction numbers worldwide solely based on the number of reported infected cases, allowing for under-reporting. Estimation is based on a moment condition that can be derived from an agent-based stochastic network model of COVID-19 transmission. The...