The Chinese government has been using annual quotas to control the amount of farm-land that can be converted for urban uses in cities. Using a sample of more than 1.5 million land-lease transactions during 2007-2016, we document facts on land conversion for urban development in China. We present...

This paper investigates the urbanization of the Indian manufacturing sector by combining enterprise data from formal and informal sectors. We find that plants in the formal sector are moving away from urban and into rural locations, while the informal sector is moving from rural to urban...

This paper analyzes the effect of transport subsidies on the spatial expansion of cities, asking whether subsidies are a source of undesirable urban sprawl. While the cost-reducing effect of transport subsidies is offset by a higher general tax burden (which reduces the demand for space), the...

The objective of this article is to explore the emergence of cognitive cities as the next step in urban development and to provide insights to city planners and administrators on how to create a connected and efficient physical environment that serves its citizens. By examining the key features...

Urbanization economies - the effects on productivity and utility created endogenously by larger cities - are a fundamental component of both the economic geography of modern societies and the perpetuation of innovation and economic growth at a national level. Cities account for vast majorities...

We use a spatial general equilibrium model with potential commuting of workers between their place of work and their place of residence to analyze the effects of rush hours on the spatial allocation of employment and population, average labor productivity and the housing market. Abolishing...

We use a spatial general equilibrium model with potential commuting of workers between their place of work and their place of residence to analyze the effects of rush hours on the spatial allocation of employment and population, average labor productivity and the housing market. Abolishing...

The present paper considers urban sprawl in Europe from a multi- dimensional and exploratory point of view. Several literatures on the topic (mainly from urban economics, but also from other fields such as urban planning or regional science) are reviewed to extract the main dimensions of the...

Tall buildings are central to facilitating sustainable urbanization and growth in cities worldwide. We estimate average elasticities of city population and built area to aggregate city building heights of 0.12 and -0.17, respectively, indicating that the largest global cities in developing...