Several studies have been carried out relating nighttime lights with economic activity. But most studies relating nighttime lights with economic activity have focused on associating higher totals in economic activity with higher sum of lights across regions. The question addressed in this paper...

This paper investigates the effects of a large temporary shock on the agglomeration of economic activity. Using variation in the potential damage intensity of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake across counties in the American West, we find that the earthquake persistently decreased various...

Among the studies on the productivity effect of migration, the role of the substitutability of human capital between migrant workers and local workers has not received much discussion. The elasticity of substitution is important for rural-urban migration in China, because there is substantial...

It is difficult to determine whether ghettos are good or bad, partly because racial segregation may have some effects that are unobservable. To overcome this challenge, we present a migration choice model that allows for estimating the overall effects of racial segregation. The key idea...

We use a production function approach to determine the impact of increased labour supply of different skill level on the skill wage premium. In particular, we use data the Brazilian Population Census for 1980 to 2000, for which we have consistent data on cities, to estimate the elasticity of...

Is labor mobility important in technological diffusion? We address this question by asking how plants assemble their workforce if they are industry pioneers in a location. By definition, these plants cannot hire local workers with industry experience. Using German social-security data, we find...

This paper examines the long-run effects on the spatial distribution of economic activity caused by historical shocks. Using variation in the potential damage intensity of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake across cities in the American West, we show that more severely affected cities experienced...

This paper demonstrates that India’s early 2000s mobile phone service expansion, or the “telecom boom” led to net rural-urban migration of about 13 million individuals out of which 4 million moved for employment. To estimate the effects, we exploit the heterogeneous expansion of telecom...