Working papers
The productivity
advantages of large cities: Distinguishing agglomeration from firm selection (with Pierre-Philippe Combes, Laurent Gobillon, Diego Puga, and Sébastien
Roux)
The effects of land transfer taxes on real estate
markets: Evidence from a natural experiment in Toronto (with Benjamin Dachis and Matt
Turner)
The Fundamental Law of
Road Congestion: Evidence from US cities
(with Matt Turner)
Urban growth and
transportation (with Matt Turner)
Assessing the effects of local
taxation using microgeographic data (with Henry Overman and Laurent Gobillon)
Is the division of labour limited by the extent of the market? Evidence from
French cities (with Hubert Jayet)
California Dreamin’:
The feeble case for cluster policies
Forthcoming papers
Estimating
agglomeration economies with history, geology, and worker effects (with Pierre-Philippe Combes, Laurent Gobillon,
and Sébastien
Roux)
Chapter forthcoming in The Economics of
Agglomeration, edited by Ed Glaeser
The Economics of Clusters: Evidence from France (with Philippe Martin,
Thierry Mayer, and Florian Mayneris)
Book forthcoming at Oxford
University Press
Urban Growth: Trends vs. Noise
Studia Regionalia,
forthcoming
Innovation in cities: classical and
random urban growth models
Chapter forthcoming in Handbook of Research on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Edward
Elgar, forthcoming (edited by David Audretsch, Oliver
Falck, and Stephan Heblich).
The productivity advantages of large
cities: Distinguishing agglomeration from firm selection (with Pierre-Philippe Combes, Laurent Gobillon,
Diego Puga, and Sébastien
Roux) (.pdf)
Firms are more productive on
average in larger cities. Two explanations have been offered: agglomeration
economies (larger cities promote interactions that increase productivity) and
firm selection (larger cities toughen competition allowing only the most
productive to survive). To distinguish between them, we nest a generalised version of a seminal firm selection model and a
standard model of agglomeration. Stronger selection in larger cities
left-truncates the productivity distribution whereas stronger agglomeration
right-shifts and dilates the distribution. We assess the relative importance of
agglomeration and firm selection using French establishment-level data and a
new quantile approach. Spatial productivity
differences in
The effects of land transfer taxes on real estate
markets: Evidence from a natural experiment in
Taxes levied on the sale or
purchase of real estate are pervasive but little studied. By exploiting a
natural experiment arising from
Media coverage (partial): Globe
and Mail, Dec 10, 2008, Globe
and Mail, Dec 9, 2008, Toronto Star, December
10, 2008, Vancouver
Sun, December 10, 2008.
The
Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence
from US cities
(with Matt Turner)
(Main paper .pdf
Technical Appendix .pdf)
We investigate the relationship
between interstate highways and highway vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) in us
cities. We find that VKT increases proportionately to highways and identify
three important sources for this extra VKT: an increase in driving by current
residents; an increase in transportation intensive production activity; and an
inflow of new residents. The provision of public transportation has no impact
on VKT. We also estimate the aggregate city level demand for VKT and find it to
be very elastic. We conclude that an increased provision of roads or public
transit is unlikely to relieve congestion and that the current provision of
roads exceeds the optimum given the absence of congestion pricing.
Estimating
agglomeration economies with history, geology, and worker effects (with Pierre-Philippe Combes, Laurent Gobillon,
and Sébastien
Roux) (.pdf)
Does productivity increase with density? We revisit
the issue using French wage and TFP data. To deal with the ‘endogenous quantity
of labour’ bias (i.e., urban agglomeration is
consequence of high local productivity rather than a cause), we take an
instrumental variable approach and introduce a new set of geological
instruments in addition to standard historical instruments. To deal with the
‘endogenous quality of labour’ bias (i.e., cities
attract skilled workers so that the effects of skills and urban agglomeration
are confounded), we take a worker fixed-effect approach with wage data. We find
modest evidence about the endogenous quantity of labour
bias and both sets of instruments give a similar answer. We find that the
endogenous quality of labour bias is quantitatively
more important.
Urban
growth and transportation (with Matt Turner) (.pdf)
We estimate the effects of major roads and public
transit on the growth of major cities in the
Assessing
the effects of local taxation using microgeographic data (with Henry Overman and Laurent Gobillon)
(.pdf)
We study the impact of local taxation on the location
and growth of firms. Our empirical methodology pairs establishments across
jurisdictional boundaries to estimate the impact of taxation. Our approach
improves on existing work as it corrects for unobserved establishment
heterogeneity, for unobserved time-varying site specific effects, and for the endogeneity of local taxation. Applied to data for English
manufacturing establishments we find that local taxation has a negative impact
on employment growth, but no effect on entry.
Is the division of labour limited by the extent of the market? Evidence from
French cities (with Hubert Jayet)
(.pdf)
This paper provides some evidence that the division
of labour is limited by the extent of the (local)
market. We first propose a theoretical model. Its main prediction is that
scarce occupations are over-represented in large cities. Using census data for
French cities, we then provide strong empirical support for this prediction.
This study
examines the case for cluster policy. This case is theoretically ambiguous and
empirically very weak.
The Economics of Clusters: Evidence from
Book forthcoming at Oxford
University Press
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