We use data from Reserve Bank of India to study the impact of India's Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) highway project on finance-dependent activity. Loan volumes increase by 20-30% in districts along GQ and are stronger in industries more dependent upon external finance. Loan growth begins with...

The world has pledged to protect 30 percent of its land and waters by 2030 to halt the rapid deterioration of critical ecosystems. We summarize the state of knowledge about the impacts of protected area policies, with a focus on deforestation and vegetation cover. We discuss critical issues...

China's land market features a substantial industrial discount: industrial-zoned land is an order of magnitude cheaper than residential land. In contrast to explanations centered on subsidies to industry or promoting industry growth, we emphasize the importance of future tax revenues from the...

A popular approach for estimating climate change impacts on agriculture is to rely on supply-side reduced-form regressions. These methods, which include the Ricardian approach, focus on how farmers and agricultural land market react to changes in climatic conditions, under the implicit...

The European Union designates 26% of its landmass as a protected area, limiting economic development to favor biodiversity. This paper uses the staggered introduction of protected-area policies between 1985 and 2020 to study the selection of land for protection and the causal effect of...

We predict the amount, share, and value of land dedicated to roadways within and across 316 US Primary Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Despite the amount and value of land dedicated to roadway, our study provides the first such estimate across a broad range of metropolitan areas. Our basic...

Housing prices across much of America have hit historic highs, while less housing is being built. If the U.S. housing stock had expanded at the same rate from 2000-2020 as it did from 1980-2000, there would be 15 million more housing units. This paper analyzes the decline of America's new...

We study the relationship between firm centralization and organizational reproduction in satellite locations. For decentralized firms, the ethnic compositions of inventors in satellite locations mostly resemble their host cities, with little link to the inventor composition of their parent...

A common tactic to estimate willingness-to-travel exploits variation in the relative proximity of consumers to supplier locations. The validity of these estimates relies on the exogeneity of that consumer-supplier distance. We argue that distance to suppliers is endogenous because suppliers...

This paper reviews recent research in spatial economics. The field of spatial economics is concerned with the determinants and effects of the location of economic activity in geographic space. It analyses how geographical location shapes the economic activities performed by agents, their...