We build a tractable model of frictional labor markets and segmented housing markets to study welfare effects of regulations, including spatial misallocation and deviation from competitive pricing of rents. The model is summarized by a labor demand curve depending on rents and wages, a wage curve reflecting labor market tightness and rents, and finally a rent curve reflecting employment. In this economy

This article analyzes the geographic clustering of crowdfunding (CF) activity across two countries at the city level. We find that the ability of Kickstarter projects to attract funding or backers is spikier than the simple number of projects, suggesting that while the locations of Kickstarter projects are not as clustered, projects that are able to recruit funding are clustering. In addition, we find

This article considers the heterogeneous microfoundations of agglomeration economies. It studies the co-location of industries to look for evidence of labour pooling, input sharing and knowledge spillovers. The novel contribution of the article is that it estimates single-industry models using a common empirical framework that exploits the cross-sectional variation in how one industry co-locates with

Using longitudinal data from Burundi, we explore the consequences of refugee repatriation for stayee households in a context in which returnees faced restrictions on economic activities and mobility while abroad. We use geographical features of the receiving communities, including altitude and distance to the border, for identification. We find that a 1 percentage point increase in the local share

In this paper, we document border effects in the award of public contracts in the European single market. We use a dataset of 1.8 million contract awards, which we match to geolocations to estimate a gravity model of procurement flows between European NUTS3 region pairs. We find very sizable cross-national border effects for all types of goods and services, even after controlling for physical distance

The article studies the impact of a switch from free to charged highway provision on firm numbers and private sector employment in a panel of Portuguese municipalities covering the period 2007–2013. It exploits the fact that tolls on certain highways in Portugal were unexpectedly introduced in reaction to the sovereign debt crisis to establish causality. Findings suggest that the price of highway tolls

Journal of Economic Geography 2020, 20, 249–291; doi:10.1093/jeg/lby022

Journal of Economic Geography 2019, doi:10.1093/jeg/lbz022

The present paper explores a historical case of a location where a group of merchant families established powerful positions over many generations, involving both the international trade of fine wine and human beings sold as slaves. These families lived in Bordeaux, one of the largest trading centers for trade of enslaved humans in the world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These trading

This article presents a postcolonial analysis of financial citizenship (FC) programmes in Malaysia. Drawing on secondary data and on interviews with elites and citizen investors, the paper explores the spatial and historically specific nature of financialisation in a postcolonial context. Specifically, the paper draws out the significance of FC as part of broader nation building objectives in Malaysia

We adapt the product-space approach of Hausmann–Hidalgo et al. to the case of Italian provinces, examining the extent to which network connectedness and centrality of a province’s exports is related to its economic performance. We construct a new Product Space Position (PSP) index which retains many of the Hausmann–Hidalgo et al. features but which is also much better suited to handling regional and

We investigate whether plants inside and outside geographic clusters differ in their resilience to adverse economic shocks. To this end, we develop a bottom-up procedure to delimit clusters using Canadian geo-coded plant-level data. Focusing on the textile and clothing (T&C) sector and exploiting the series of dramatic changes faced by that sector between 2001 and 2013, we find little evidence that

This article examines whether localized clusters of similar industries produce agglomeration economies in the formal and informal sectors. We develop a Bayesian method to estimate a spatial autoregressive model with an endogenous independent variable. We use establishment-level census data that cover both formal registered and informal unregistered establishments in Cambodia. We find that the density

What forces drive regional economic divergence? This study identifies colonial-era missions as an institutional force in shaping economic relations in Ghana. We conceptualize Christian missions as an institution, in its solid form, as the educational infrastructure and trade networks developed, and in its formal form, as advancing new rules that governed cultural and trade development. We use survey

We estimate the heterogeneous impact of the scale, composition and consumer good effect of ethnic diversity on individuals’ job and residential location. Using an extensive pooled micro panel data set in which homeowners in the Netherlands are identified in both the housing and labor market, we can derive the combined effect of ethnic diversity in both markets. We test a model that integrates the utility

Business location and relocation decisions tend to favor urban areas over rural areas, mainly due to the benefits derived from agglomeration economies. However, recent data from the USA show that rural counties have attracted some businesses from urban counties. This is the first study to focus on these relocations and to explore what locational factors drive these migration flows. We pay specific

We study the effect of railway access on population growth in 19th century Switzerland. Our analysis is based on geo-referenced railway network information and an inconsequential units IV approach. Gaining direct railway access increased annual population growth by 0.4 percentage points, while municipalities in close vicinity but no direct access (i.e. 2–10 km distance) experienced a growth slump of

This paper develops a model to study the impact of trade costs on developing countries’ industrialization when sequential production is networked in global value chains (GVCs). In a two-country setting, a decrease in trade costs of intermediates is associated with South joining and moving up the value chain and both North and South experiencing a welfare improvement. The wage gap between North and

While there is abundant evidence demonstrating that residents permanently migrate in search of locations with cleaner air, there are considerably fewer studies that investigate if travellers also take short-term trips to reduce their exposure to air pollution. In this study, we use a complete dataset of flights at Beijing International Airport to investigate if travel patterns are indeed correlated