A large body of research has established a positive connection between an industry's productivity and the magnitude of its presence within locally defined geographic areas. This paper examines the extent to which this relationship can be explained by a micro-level underpinning commonly...

Although the association between industrial agglomeration and productivity has been widely examined and documented, little work has explored the possibility that these 'external' productivity shifts are the product of more advanced technologies. This paper offers a look at this hypothesis using...

Unemployment is becoming more concentrated. Neighborhoods that had high unemployment in 1980 had even higher unemployment 20 years later. What are the possible reasons-and solutions-for this trend?

Conventional urban economic analysis suggests that a local economy's size is closely related to a number of features, including levels of human capital and the availability of specialized inputs, which are likely to influence positively the rate at which it accumulates further economic activity....

In finding a career, workers tend to make numerous job changes, with the majority of "complex" changes (i.e. those involving changes of industry) occurring relatively early in their working lives. This pattern suggests that workers tend to experiment with different types of work before settling...

This paper reports evidence on the geographic pattern of income inequality, both within and between neighborhoods, across a sample of 359 U.S. metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2000. The results indicate that overall income inequality within a metro area tends to be driven by variation within...

The surge in U.S. wage inequality over the past several decades is now commonly attributed to an increase in the returns paid to skill. Although theories differ with respect to why, specifically, this increase has come about, many agree that it is strongly tied to the increase in the relative...