The commonly-used satellite images of nighttime lights fail to capture the true brightness of most cities. We show that night lights are a reliable proxy for economic activity at the city level, provided they are first corrected for top-coding. We present a stylized model of urban luminosity and...

The commonly-used satellite images of nighttime lights fail to capture the true brightness of most cities. We show that night lights are a reliable proxy for economic activity at the city level, provided they are first corrected for top-coding. We present a stylized model of urban luminosity and...

We study the impact of international long-distance flights on the global spatial allocation of economic activity. To identify causal effects, we exploit variation due to regulatory and technological constraints which give rise to a discontinuity in connectedness between cities at a distance of...

Urban concentration differs across countries. One determinant of these differences is economic development, which first increases and subsequently decreases urban concentration. I condition the degree of urban concentration on the potential of countries to develop a balanced urban system. These...

Malaria – a disease caused by parasitic microorganisms of the Plasmodium genus – has been shown to impede economic growth and socioeconomic development in the long-term. In this paper we use annual regional data from India to show that malaria outbreaks are associated with an immediate...

We study the impact of international long-distance flights on the global spatial allocation of economic activity. To identify causal effects, we exploit variation due to regulatory and technological constraints which give rise to a discontinuity in connectedness between cities at a distance of...

Malaria – a disease caused by parasitic microorganisms of the Plasmodium genus – has been shown to impede economic growth and socioeconomic development in the long-term. In this paper we use annual regional data from India to show that malaria outbreaks are associated with an immediate...

This study provides new causal evidence for the impact of a large-scale natural disaster on local economic activity in Iran using nighttime light intensity. We apply the synthetic control method (SCM) to nighttime light (NTL) data from 1992 to 2013 to study the impact of the 2003 Bam earthquake...