We compare the labour market response to region-specific shocks in Europe and the US and to national shocks in Europe and investigate changes over time. We employ a multi-level factor model to decompose regional labour market variables and then estimate the dynamic response of the employment...

The economics literature clearly shows that the transmission of knowledge diminishes with physical distance, a factor contributing to industrial clustering. This paper investigates how those distances have stretched over time. We measure the physical distance between collaborating inventors, as...

This paper examines racial disparities in mortgage processing time prior to the global financial crisis. We find that Black borrowers are underrepresented and experience a longer processing time than White borrowers among the mortgages securitized by government-sponsored enterprises. At the same...

We study the joint evolution of prices and rents of residential property. After constructing rent and price indices for renter- and owner-occupied properties, we decompose the change in the price of occupant-owned property into (1) changes in rent, (2) changes in the relative prices of investor-...

This paper provides new evidence on the effect of school construction projects on home prices, academic achievement, and public school enrollment. Taking advantage of the staggered implementation of a comprehensive school construction project in a poor urban district, we find that, by six years...

We examine whether there is a tradeoff between employing internal (firm) resources and purchased external (local) resources in process innovation. We draw on a rich data set of Internet investments by 86,879 U.S. establishments to examine decisions to invest in advanced Internet technology. We...

We estimate a model of urban productivity in which the agglomeration effect of density is enhanced by a metropolitan area’s stock of human capital. Estimation accounts for potential biases due to the endogeneity of density and industrial composition effects. Using new information on output per...

Beginning in 1922, the rate of exit of U.S. tire producers increased sharply and the industry began a severe and protracted shakeout. Just five years earlier, the tire industry experienced a surge in entry that led to a rise of over 80% in the number of producers. We propose an explanation for...

The boom and subsequent bust in housing construction and prices over the 2000s is widely regarded as a principal contributor to the Financial Panic of 2007 and the subsequent Great Recession. As of this writing, housing market activity remains at depressed levels as the economy slowly resolves...

This paper introduces a model which identifies the economic activity of each local economy (location) and observes the time distance between each pair of locations as well as the average time distance between sub locations in each local economy. The study focuses on five categories of firms:...