Recent population growth across U.S. locations (metros, micros, and remaining counties) has been strongly correlated with initial size and density. From 2000 to 2017, growth was positively correlated with initial population except among medium and large metros (those with population of at least...

Centralized employment remains a benchmark stylization of metropolitan land use. To address its empirical relevance, we delineate "central employment zones" (CEZs) central business districts together with nearby concentrated employment - for 183 metropolitan areas in 2000. To do so, we first...

Does a location's growth benefit or suffer from being geographically close to large economic centers? Spatial proximity may lead to competition and hurt growth, but it may also generate positive spillovers and enhance growth. Using data on U.S. counties and metro areas for the period 1840-2017,...

The sharp rebound in U.S. multifamily construction since the housing crisis has been driven largely by young adults, who swung back toward living in apartments following a shift away during the housing boom. But adults in their 50s and 60s accounted for nearly all the net increase in multifamily...

This paper argues that centralized employment remains an empirically relevant stylization of midsize U.S. metros. It extends the monocentric model to explicitly include leisure as a source of utility but constrains workers to supply fixed labor hours. Doing so sharpens the marginal disutility...

Metropolitan areas --unions of nearby built-up locations within which people travel on a day-to-day basis among places of residence, employment, and consumption--serve as a fundamental unit of economic analysis. But existing delineations of U.S. metro areas--including metropolitan Core-Based...

The monocentric city framework is generalized to comprise a system of metros. A "representative" closed metro calibrates parameters and establishes a reservation utility and perimeter land price that must be matched by open metros. The open metros are assumed to have exogenous productivity below...

This article examines forces underlying the housing recovery to determine when sustained construction growth will resume. The analysis suggests that very strong multifamily construction growth is likely to resume by early 2014 and that moderately strong single-family construction growth is...

More than 17 percent of households in American central cities live in poverty; in American suburbs, just 7.4 percent of households live in poverty. The income elasticity of demand for land is too low for urban poverty to be the result of wealthy individuals' wanting to live where land is cheap...