This paper presents a simple North-South model of endogenous growth, based on learning by doing, which is consistent with the following empirical observations: (i) the price of investment goods relative to consumption goods has been falling for the last 40 years in most industrialized countries,...

This paper presents a simple North-South model of endogenous growth, based on learning by doing, which is consistent with the following empirical observations: (i) the price of investment goods relative to consumption goods has been falling for the last 40 years in most industrialized countries,...

We show that the two-sector version of the AK model proposed by Rebelo (1991) can be read as an endogenous growth extension of Greenwood, Hercowitz and Krusell (1997). By confining constant returns to capital to the investment goods sector, the model generates endogenously the secular downward...

The rank-size model - which states that the size distribution of cities in a country follows a Pareto distribution - has been recognized as one of those stylised facts or amazing empirical regularities, in spatial economics. A common problem in city size distribution studies concerns the...

Using a comprehensive international trade data set we investigate empirical regularities (known as Zipf’s Law or the rank-size rule) for the distribution of the interaction between countries as measured by revealed comparative advantage. Using the recently developed estimator by Gabaix and...

European economic integration is commonly believed to be incomplete, and that further reforms are needed. In this context, the union of U.S. states is considered the benchmark of complete economic integration and is often the basis for comparison regarding the extent of E.U economic integration....

We analyze the distribution of economic activity across space for different types of activity and different levels of aggregation. Not only is this distribution highly uneven (independently of the type of activity and level of aggregation), it is also remarkably regular regarding its size...

Exploiting the cascade structure of cities and based on a dataset for U.S. cities between 1840 and 2016, the aim of this short paper is to answer three important questions: First, do we observe that the U.S. city size distribution exhibits a smooth transition to Zipf's law from the beginning or...

We analyze the first data set on consistently defined functional urban areas in Europe and compare the European to the US urban system. City sizes in Europe do not follow a power law: the largest cities are “too small” to follow Zipf’s law.

This paper documents that a process of industrial restructuring has been transforming the developed economies, where large corporations are accounting for less economic activity and small firms are accounting for a greater share of economic activity. Not all countries, however, are experiencing...