Conventional urban economic analysis suggests that a local economy's size is closely related to a number of features, including levels of human capital and the availability of specialized inputs, which are likely to influence positively the rate at which it accumulates further economic activity....

This paper offers a descriptive empirical analysis of the geographic pattern of income inequality within a sample of 359 US metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2000. Specifically, we decompose the variance of metropolitan area-level household income into two parts: one associated with the degree...

While a sizable body of research has studied the relationship between aggregate productivity and geographic density, little work has considered how density influences the distribution of productivity across workers. This paper offers some descriptive evidence on the relationship between three...

This paper examines the determinants of employment growth in metro areas. To obtain growth rates, we use a Markov-switching model that separates a city's growth path into two distinct phases (high and low), each with its own growth rate. The simple average growth rate over some period is,...

While the productivity gains associated with the geographic concentration of industry (i.e., localisation) are by now well-documented, little work has considered how those gains are distributed across individual workers. This article offers evidence on the connection between total employment and...

Although the association between industrial agglomeration and productivity has been widely examined and documented, little work has explored the possibility that these 'external' productivity shifts are the product of more advanced technologies. This paper offers a look at this hypothesis using...

In finding a career, workers tend to make numerous job changes, with the majority of 'complex' changes (i.e. those involving changes of industry) occurring relatively early in their working lives. This pattern suggests that workers tend to experiment with different types of work before settling...