Whether openness to trade can be expected to reduce or exacerbate the equilibrium exposure of real income to productivity shocks remains theoretically ambiguous and empirically unclear. In this paper we exploit the expansion of railroads across India between 1861 to 1930|a setting in which...

How large are the benefits of transportation infrastructure projects, and what explains these benefits? To shed new light on these questions, this paper uses archival data from colonial India to investigate the impact of India's vast railroad network. Guided by four predictions from a general...

This article describes methods used in the field of spatial economics that combine insights from economic theory and evidence from data in order to answer counter- factual questions. I outline a general framework that emphasizes three elements: a specific question to be answered, a set of...

How large are the benefits of transportation infrastructure projects, and what explains these benefits? To shed new light on these questions, I collect archival data from colonial India and use it to estimate the impact of India's vast railroad network. Guided by six predictions from a general...

The primary motivation behind quantitative modeling in international trade and many other fields is to shed light on the economic consequences of policy changes. To help assess and potentially strengthen the credibility of such quantitative predictions we introduce an IV-based goodness-of-fit...