Using two standard location models, we investigate price competition and divergence from optimal product differentiation when consumer preferences are influenced by the number of consumers purchasing the same brand or shopping at the same store. Negative network effects tend to lessen...

Lancasterian models of product differentiation typically assume a one-dimensional characteristics space. We show that standard results on prices and locations no longer hold when firms compete in a multi-characteristics space. In the location game with n characteristics, firms choose to maximize...

This paper examines the impact of public infrastructure on industrial location when increasing returns are present. Poor infrastructure implies costs of Samuelson's `iceberg' form and alter trade both within and between countries. Trade integration implies that firms tend to locate in countries...

The paper considers the equilibrium location of two industries in two countries. Both industries are imperfectly competitive and produce goods which are used in final consumption and as intermediates by firms in the same industry. Intermediate usage creates cost and demand linkages between firms...

It is well understood that the two most popular empirical models of location choice - conditional logit and Poisson - return identical coefficient estimates when the regressors are not individual specific. We show that these two models differ starkly in terms of their implied predictions. The...

Every year housing markets in the United Kingdom and the United States experience systematic above-trend increases in both prices and transactions during the second and third quarters (the "hot season") and below-trend falls during the fourth and first quarters (the "cold season"). House price...

Place-based policies commonly target underperforming areas, such as deteriorating downtown business districts and disadvantaged regions. Principal examples include enterprise zones, European Union Structural Funds, and industrial cluster policies. Place-based policies are rationalized by various...

Houses and apartments sold in New York and New Jersey at prices above $1 million are subject to the so-called 1% “mansion tax" imposed on the full value of the transaction. This policy generates a discontinuity (a “notch") in the overall tax liability. We rely on this and other...

This paper examines the impact of the EC regional aid policies to finance infrastructure investment in the poorest regions where large disparities in public infrastructure (transport, telecommunications, energy and education) exist. We show that in a model in which trade is based on increasing...

In a spatial economy where oligopolist firms compete in R&D, it is found that geography affects the innovative behaviour of firms. Notably, international differences in market size conduce to endogenous asymmetries between firms given that firms located in the country with more demand have...