I define a composite amenity that provides aesthetic and consumption value to local residents: Urbanity. A novel data set of geo-tagged photos shared in internet communities serves as a proxy for urbanity. From the spatial pattern of house prices and photos I identify the value of urbanity in...

Compared to other European countries rental apartments dominate the German housing market. Policymakers and a large part of the population alike worry about the amount of affordable living space. Especially in metropolitan areas a high demand for living space exists and has been leading to a...

Recent studies point to commuting as a key element to understand regional dynamics and urban integration. This study propose three ideal types (Max Weber) of commuting flows based on its relations with social processes which impact urban structure by affecting residence and job locations in...

Die Frage nach der betrieblichen Standortwahl ist ein komplexer Prozess, bei dem mehrere Faktoren wie beispielsweise das Absatzpotential, die Konkurrenzsituation oder die Erreichbarkeit im Vorfeld untersucht werden müssen. Auch die finanzielle Ausstattung der Bevölkerung, die regional sehr...

In a world with multinational companies (MNC's) changes such as those implied by the realization of EC's internal market will affect the locational choice made by geographically mobile MNC's outside the EC. The reason is that any change which affects the competitive advantage of EC producers...

We analyze firms' location choices in a Hotelling model with two-dimensional consumer heterogeneity, along addresses and transport cost parameters (flexibility). Firms can price discriminate based on perfect data on consumer addresses and (possibly) imperfect data on consumer flexibility. We...

Motor vehicle and motor vehicle parts production plants tend to exhibit a strong degree of agglomeration. This paper estimates a spatial model utilizing detailed plant-level data that is pooled across seven countries in Europe. The paper makes several contributions. First, we assemble a set of...

We use longitudinal micro data to estimate the urban density premium for U.S. establishments, controlling for observed establishment characteristics and dynamic establishment behavior. We find that a doubling of urban density increases the average earnings of establishments by between 6 and 10...

This paper studies the efficiency of decentralized leadership in federations where selfish regional governments provide regional and federal public goods and the benevolent central government implements interregional earmarked and income transfers. Without residential mobility, unlimited...