This paper develops an index of allocative efficiency that depends upon the distribution of mark-ups across goods and is separable from an index of standard Ricardian gains from trade. It determines how changes in trade frictions affect allocative efficiency in an oligopoly model of...

There is wide variation in the sizes of manufacturing plants, even within the most narrowly defined industry classifications. Standard theories attribute such size differences to productivity differences. This paper develops an alternative theory in which industries are made up of large plants...

Central place theory is a key building block of economic geography and an empirically plausible description of city systems. This paper provides a rationale for central place theory via a dynamic programming formulation of the social planner's problem of city hierarchy. We show that there must...

We estimate the factors determining specialization of crop choice at the level of individual fields, distinguishing between the role of natural advantage (soil characteristics) and economies of density (scale economies achieved when farmers plant neighboring fields the same). Using rich...

The fact that large manufacturing plants export relatively more than small plants has been at the foundation of much work in the international trade literature. We examine this fact using Census microdata on plant shipments from the Commodity Flow Survey. We show that the fact is not entirely an...

This paper considers a dynamic model of industry location in which there is a tension between two forces. First, there is the agglomerating force of preference of intermediate input variety that tends to keep an industry at its original location. Second, other factors tend to pull the industry...

Theory suggests that vertical disintegration should be greater in areas where industries localize. This paper provides some evidence that this implication is true for the U.S. manufacturing sector. Purchased inputs as a percent of the value of output is used as a measure of vertical...