The purpose of this article is to show that, in Canada as in the United States, government regulation promotes sprawl through anti-density zoning, minimum parking requirements, and overly wide streets. However, Canadian cities are less "sprawling" than American cities- perhaps because at least...

We consider a search-matching model in which black workers are discriminated against and the job arrival rates of all workers depend on social networks as well as distance to jobs. Location choices are driven by the racial preferences of households (both blacks and whites) consciously choosing...

This paper explores the role of retailers as an urban amenity. Using data for Swedish rural and city municipalities for 2002-2008, "accessibility to shops" measures are constructed for the shops in the municipalities and in the hosting regions separately to examine the relationship between...

One question surrounding the 2009 U.S. “Cash for Clunkers” program is whether it induced consumers to purchase greener vehicles than they would otherwise have purchased. This paper views the program as a natural experiment, which offered higher rebates to consumers buying more fuel-efficient...

The past thirty years have seen a dramatic decrease in the rate of income convergence across states and in population flows to wealthy places. These changes coincide with (1) an increase in housing prices in productive areas, (2) a divergence in the skill-specific real returns to living in...

The aim of this paper is to provide a new mechanism based on social interactions explaining why distance to jobs can have a negative impact on workers' labor-market outcomes, especially ethnic minorities. Building on Granovetter's idea that weak ties are superior to strong ties for providing...

Whether people of differing types can live happily together is one of the most important social and political questions concerning urban areas. From a variety of theoretical perspectives, such mixing seems extremely unlikely. While the theoretical result seems well supported in the context of...

Whether people of differing types can live happily together is one of the most important social and political questions concerning urban areas. From a variety of theoretical perspectives, such mixing seems extremely unlikely. While the theoretical result seems well supported in the context of...

Congestion levels have grown substantially in recent years, while the traditional economic response to congestion – road pricing – remains politically infeasible in most locations. Tradable permits are likely to be a more viable alternative, because they do not require a net financial flow...

We develop a standard search-matching model in which mobility costs are so high that it is too costly for workers to relocate when a change in their employment status occurs. We show that, in equilibrium, wages increase with distance to jobs and commuting costs because firms need to compensate...