This paper attempts to model directly the "folk theorem" of spatial economics, according to which increasing returns to scale are essential for understanding the geographical distributions of activity. The model uses the simple structure of most New Economic Geography papers, with two identical...

Is the cross-sectional distribution of house prices close to a lognormal distribution, as is often assumed in empirical studies on house price indexes? How does the distribution evolve over time? To address these questions, we investigate the cross-sectional distribution of house prices in the...

We present a hedonic framework to estimate U.S. households' preferences over local climates, using detailed weather and 2000 Census data. We find that Americans favor an average daily temperature of 65 degrees Fahrenheit, will pay more on the margin to avoid excess heat than cold, and are not...

The effects of social transfers on growth are still unclear. The limitations of aggregated data at sub-national levels have confined the analysis to the use of simulation models and household surveys. As an alternative, this paper contributes to the empirical literature by assessing the effects...

This paper aims to provide a conceptual and operational context for analysing regional inequalities. It does so by utilizing a 'search & matching' framework. The model, developed in this paper, maps the way in which individuals are distributed according to: 1) the abilities of individuals to...

The present paper considers the issue of High Frequency Trading (HFT) regulation. Rather than discussing macro-level effects of HFT that are still under debate (Sornette & Von der Becke, 2011) its analysis focuses on the issue of regulation from the perspective of HFT firms. Assuming that HFT...

This paper provides empirical evidence that individual labor productivity significantly depends on the size of the local labor market in which a worker previously acquired work experience. The analysis uses German micro data from the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) on transitions to...

This paper develops a model in which market structure is determined endogenously by the choice of intermediation mode. We consider two representative business modes of intermediation that are widely used in real-life markets: one is a middleman mode by which an intermediary holds inventories...

We investigate an equilibrium search model in which the search frictions are increasing with the distance to the central business district allowing for on-the-job search and endogenous (monopsony) wage formation and land allocation. We find that there are many different possible outcomes with...