Social interactions are considered pivotal to agglomeration economies. We explore a unique dataset on mobile phone calls to examine how distance and population density shape the structure of social interactions. Exploiting an exogenous change in travel times, we show that distance is highly...

In the current age of trade and financial openness, local economies in developing countries are becoming increasingly exposed to external investments. The objective of the proposed two-sector model with environmental externalities is to provide an insight into the interaction between external...

This paper explores the effects of trade liberalization envisioned in a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union. We use a new quantitative spatial trade model with consumptive and productive uses of land and inputoutput linkages. Our...

This paper surveys the literature on group selection. I describe the early contributions and the group selection controversy. I also describe the main approaches to group selection in the recent literature; fixation, assortative group formation, and reproductive externalities. -- Altruism ; spite...

Our paper offers the first justification for the U.S. bankruptcy code, in which firms are not allowed to commit themselves ex-ante in their lending agreements either to (Chapter 7) liquidation or to (Chapter 11) reorganization in case of distress ex-post. If fire-sale liquidation imposes...

This paper investigates the connection between economic agglomeration and trade patterns within the U.S. at the industry level. On the consumption side, industry- and state-specific international imports and elasticities of substitution are shown to be systematically connected to consumption...

We provide estimates of the impact and long-run elasticities of tax base with respect to tax rates for four large U.S. cities: Houston (property taxation), Minneapolis (property taxation), New York City (property, general sales, and income taxation), and Philadelphia (property, gross receipts,...

This article examines unemployment disparities and efficiency in a densely populated economy with two job centers and workers distributed between them. We introduce commuting costs and search-matching frictions to deal with the spatial mismatch between workers and firms. In equilibrium, there...

Carbon leakage provides an efficiency argument for unilateral climate policy to differentiate emission prices in favor of emission-intensive and trade-exposed sectors. At the same time, differential emission pricing can be (mis-)used as a beggar-thy-neighbor policy to exploit terms of trade....

Carbon leakage provides an efficiency argument for unilateral climate policy to differentiate emission prices in favor of emission-intensive and trade-exposed sectors. At the same time, differential emission pricing can be (mis-)used as a beggar-thy-neighbor policy to exploit terms of trade....