There has been vast interest in the distribution of city sizes in an economy, but this research has largely neglected that cities also differ along another fundamental dimension: age. Using novel data on the foundation dates of almost 8,000 American cities, we find that older cities in the US...

In this paper we take a detailed look at the sectoral anatomy of regional growth in German regions over the period 1978-2008. In the aggregate, the German economy is characterized by a secular decline of the manufacturing sector and a rise of the modern service economy. This trend of structural...

The advent of digital television has triggered a revolution in the use of radio spectrum worldwide and in particular in Europe, where the digital switchover, meaning the migration process from analogue to digital broadcasting, has led to two major consequences on spectrum use. First of all,...

This paper develops a quantitative model of city structure to separate agglomeration forces, dispersion forces and fundamentals as determinants of location choices. The model remains tractable and amenable to empirical analysis because of stochastic shocks to worker productivity, which yield a...

Regional productivity differences are large and provide scope for productivity-enhancing inter-regional labor mobility. Using an optimal taxation framework that combines an intensive labor supply margin with an extensive, productivity- enhancing migration margin, we explore the implications of...

This paper analyzes a closed linear polycentric city with homogenous households who probabilistically select their workplace and residence locations. The study utilizes a continuous logit model to describe household location choices. In contrast to the classic urban model with deterministic...

In this paper, we provide novel evidence on the contemporaneous and persistent effects of regional policy. We apply a quasi-experimental identification strategy exploiting the fact that municipalities in the West-German Zonenrandgebiet (ZRG) were eligible for substantial regional transfers...

A country's urban silhouettes prophesy its future climate policy, or so this paper argues. The more its city silhouettes are skewed to the periphery, the more likely a country is to implement the carbon tax. This is why the effect of a country's urban form on greenhouse gas emissions -- a bone...

We study the effect of international trade and freeness of trade on interregional inequality within countries. We estimate a model derived from a structural economic geography approach where interregional inequality depends on weighted trade shares and trade costs and where we can derive an...