This paper introduces a new city-level panel dataset constructed using satellite nighttime light imagery and grid population data. The dataset contains over 1,500 cities covering 43 economies of Asia and the Pacific from 1992 to 2016. With the dataset, we perform a variety of analyses for Asia...

This paper presents evidence on the spatial distribution and effects of urban agglomeration on firm innovation. It uses a unique dataset that consistently defines city boundaries and identifies firms' innovation-related activities across 25 developing countries in Asia. We find firm innovation...

We delineate metropolitan areas (MAs) in the Philippines using cellphone user flow data to proxy for daily commutes. The exercise identifies a number of large MAs that are not officially recognized, and different spatial extents for the three officially designated MAs. The urban system aligns...

Throughout 2020, national and subnational governments worldwide implemented nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to contain the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19). These included community quarantines, also known as lockdowns, of varying length, scope, and stringency that restricted...

We study the interaction between transit improvements and land use policies in the context of Bengaluru, one of India's largest cities. The city inaugurated a metro system in 2011. Yet it has low building heights even near metro stations, reflecting low floor-area ratio limits. We construct a...

Benchmarking is intended to help gauge where economies rank relative to others. However, historically educational benchmarking has often elected to use indicators based on their ease of availability, rather than a clear and defined link between inputs and learning outcomes. In this paper, we...

This paper examines the relationship between urban agglomeration and firm innovation using a recently developed dataset that consistently measures city boundaries across Asia together with geo-referenced firm-level data. It finds that the spatial distribution of innovation by firms is highly...