How does a country's economic geography evolve along the development path? This paper documents recent employment growth in 18,961 regions in eight of the world's main economies. Overall, market potential is losing importance, and local density is gaining importance, as correlates of local...

This paper analyzes the effects of the U.S. tax treatment of the R&D activities of American multinationals. Recent evidence indicates that the level of R&D spending is highly sensitive to its after-tax cost. The U.S. Tax Reform Act of 1986 reduced the tax deductions that many American firms can...

Households hold nondiversified stock portfolios of firms headquartered near their city of residence. Explanations assign a causal role for proximity, either in generating an informational advantage or a familiarity bias. Empirical analyses assume households locate randomly, even though they...

We use data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program to study the causal effects of location on earnings. Starting from a model with employer and employee fixed effects, we estimate the average earnings premiums associated with jobs in different commuting zones (CZs) and...

Unemployment rates differ widely across local labor markets. I offer new empirical evidence that high local unemployment emerges because of elevated local job losing rates. Local employers, rather than local workers, account for most of spatial gaps in job stability. I then propose a theory in...

Puerto Rico operated as a tax haven under U.S. Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 936. Firms in the pharmaceutical industry accounted for approximately 50% of tax credits awarded and 20% of employment under the program. The U.S. Congress eliminated the tax exemption program in 2006, creating a...

We study the effects of tax laws on foreign direct investment (FDI) and direct investment abroad (DIA), distinguishing in each case between investment financed by retained earnings and investment financed by transfers from abroad. We find that tax policy, through its effect on the rate-of-return...

Puzzling results of a positive association between the number of physicians per capita and the level of fees for physician services have been reported in the literature. These results may be due to misspecification of econometric models and use of data aggre-gated across medical specialties. It...

Tax policy toward the overseas income of U.S. firms is an important issue since foreign investment accounts for a sizabLe fraction of total investment by U.S. firms. At present there is no consensus on the degree to which U.S. firms respond to tax incentives when making international investment...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relations among characteristics of U.S. firms, their tendency to invest abroad, and their choice of production locations. The larger the firm, and the higher its profitability, capital intensity, technological Intensity, and the skill level ofits labor...