This article tackles the question: Are large public expenditures on new stadiums a good investment for cities? Although public subsidies for professional sports teams are controversial, the answer to our question may well be yes. In this article, Jerry Carlino and visiting scholar Ed Coulson...

Proponents of the City Beautiful movement advocated for sizable public investments in monumental spaces, street beautification, and classical architecture. Today, economists and policymakers see the provision of consumer leisure amenities as a way to attract people and jobs to cities. But past...

The various regions of the United States, although linked, respond differently to changing economic circumstances. Traditional approaches to understanding these different reactions have relied on the assumption that long-run trends in regional income or employment are constant. Recently, many...

In the early part of this century, both employment and population tended to concentrate in large metropolitan areas such as New York. Over the past 40 years, however, jobs and people have spread out as both firms and workers have sought the lower costs of smaller, less congested places. In fact,...

Jerry Carlino points out that cities, no longer centers of manufacturing, now serve as centers of creativity and innovation. The resulting “knowledge spillovers” are important components of today's economic growth.

Jerry Carlino focuses on the economic activities that make firms in cities more productive and that make cities more attractive to urban households. Carlino finds that although agglomeration economies will continue to play a large role in the life of 21st century cities, modern cities must offer...