There is a large consensus among international institutions and national governments to favor urban-containment policies - the compact city - as a way to reduce the ecological footprint of cities. This approach overlooks the following basic trade-off: the concentration of activities decreases...

There is a wide consensus among international institutions and national governments in favor of compact (i.e. densely populated) cities as a way to improve the ecological performance of the transport system. Indeed, when both the intercity and intra-urban distributions of activities are given, a...

New economic geography focuses on the impact of falling transport costs on the spatial distribution of activities. However, it disregards the role of technological innovations, which are central to modern economic growth, as well as the role of migration costs, which are a strong impediment to...

We study how political boundaries and fiscal competition interact with the labor and land markets to determine the economic structure and performance of metropolitan areas. Contrary to general belief, institutional fragmentation need not be welfare-decreasing, and commuting from the suburbs to...

Spatial economics aims to explain the location of economic activity. While the importance of the proximity to natural resources has declined considerably, distance and location have not disappeared from economic life. Recent work in spatial economics indicates that new forces, hitherto...