Why are some cities specialised and others diversified? What are the advantages and disadvantages of urban specialisation and diversity? To what extent does the structure of cities, and the activities of firms and people in them, change over time? How does the sectoral composition of cities...

Using a point-patternmethodology, we explore a range of issues regarding the detailed location patterns of UKmanufacturing industries. In particular, we focus on the location of entrants and exiters vs. continuing establishments, domestic- vs. foreign-owned, large vs. small, and affiliated vs....

Taxes levied on the sale or purchase of real estate are pervasive but little studied. By exploiting a natural experiment arising from Toronto’s imposition of a Land Transfer Tax (LTT) in early 2008, we estimate the impact of real estate transfer taxes on the market for single family...

We estimate the effect of interstate highways on the level and composition of trade for us cities. Highways within cities have a large effect on the weight of city exports with an elasticity of approximately 0.5. We find little effect of highways on the total value of exports. Consistent with...

This paper reviews the evidence about the effects of urbanisation and cities on productivity and economic growth in developing countries using a consistent theoretical framework. Just like in developed economies, there is strong evidence that cities in developing countries bolster productive...

Striking evidence is presented of a previously unremarked transformation of urban structure from mainly sectoral to mainly functional specialisation. We offer an explanation showing that this transformation is inextricably interrelated with changes in firms' organisation. A greater variety of...

Firms are more productive on average in larger cities. Two explanations have been offered: agglomeration economies (larger cities promote interactions that increase productivity) and firm selection (larger cities toughen competition allowing only the most productive to survive). To distinguish...

We estimate the effects of major roads and public transit on the growth of major cities in the US between 1980 and 2000. We find that a 10% increase in a city’s stock of roads causes about a 2% increase in its population and employment and a small decrease in its share of poor households over...

This paper develops microfoundations for the role that diversified cities play in fostering innovation. A simple model of process innovation is proposed, where firms learn about their ideal production process by making prototypes. We build around this a dynamic general-equilibrium model, and...

We study the impact of local taxation on the location and growth of firms. Our empiricalmethodology pairs establishments across jurisdictional boundaries to estimate the impact of taxation. Our approach improves on existing work as it corrects for unobserved establishment heterogeneity, for...