The urban and regional influence of contemporary passengers, goods and information traffic within the new global economy based on knowledge and logistics, and the physical structures that shape the networks (harbours, airports, train stations, motorways) are assumed as capitally important....

We study the impact of international long-distance flights on the global spatial allocation of economic activity. To identify causal effects, we exploit variation due to regulatory and technological constraints which give rise to a discontinuity in connectedness between cities at a distance of...