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....

Classical theories -- Puzzles -- Stylized facts -- What matters -- What doesn't matter -- Aspects of general equilibrium -- General utility -- Consumption smoothing -- Local substitution -- Production -- Output -- Firms -- Inputs -- Smoothed output -- Units and unit value -- Consumption --...