[...]What explains New York’s ongoing ability to dominateAmerica’s urban landscape? In this paper, we explore theeconomic history of the city and argue that three themesemerge. First, New York’s emergence as the nation’s premier port was not the result of happenstance followed by...

[...]This paper builds primarily on research on agglomerationeconomies. Much of the empirical work on agglomeration hassought to estimate the effect on productivity of anestablishment’s local environment. The estimation hassometimes involved direct estimates of productivity(Henderson 2003) and...

[...]This paper empirically examines the spatial and temporalresponses of the New York City economy to a large, butspatially concentrated, exogenous shock to its capital stock:the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Our focus on thecity’s response allows us to draw inferences about how...

[...]The focus of my remarks is something else entirely. Mypurpose is threefold: first, to make the case that the study ofhistory is essential to understanding the present and future ofany urban area; second, to suggest that in terms of age, size,density, and demographic patterns, New York has...