National industrial concentration in the U.S. has risen sharply since the early 1980s, but there remains dispute over whether local geographic concentration has followed a similar trend. Using near population data from the Economic Censuses, we confirm and extend existing evidence on national...

This paper studies how agricultural production responds to the loss of agricultural labor during the process of urbanization and structural transformation. Using household microdata from India and exogenous variation in migration opportunities induced by urban income shocks, we show that...

This paper analyzes the effects of demand shifts within and between local labor markets on unemployment and employment levels and changes observed in those markets. Between-market demand shifts are measured by the means of sales growth for firms in each market, while within-market shifts are...

Using data from a variety of sources, this paper comprehensively documents the dramatic changes in the manufacturing sector and the large decline in employment rates and hours worked among prime-aged Americans since 2000. We use cross-region variation to explore the link between declining...

How does improving access to the supply of energy affect regional specialization in manufacturing? We evaluate the long-run employment impacts of pipelines constructed by the U.S. government during World War II to transport oil and gas from the oil fields of the Southwest to wartime industrial...

We study the effect of mean-preserving labor reallocation on business cycle outcomes. We develop an empirical methodology using a local area's exposure to industry reallocation based on the area's initial industry composition and employment trends in the rest of the country over a full...

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....

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...

We study the joint process of urbanization and industrialization in the US economy between 1880 and 1940. We show that only a small share of aggregate industrialization is accounted for by the relocation of workers from remote rural areas to industrial hubs like Chicago or New York City....