There is a large and extensive literature examining the strength of agglomeration economies and, more generally, the determinants of spatial variations in productivity for developed countries. However, the corresponding literature for developing countries is comparatively scant. This paper...

We investigate the impact of increasing concentration in local residential construction markets on housing production. We show that the increase in concentration in the past decade has led to lower production volume, fewer units in the production pipeline, and greater unit price volatility. Our...

Local homebuilding markets have become highly concentrated in the past decade. We document this increase in concentration and use IV regressions to show that it has led to lower production volume, fewer units in the production pipeline, and greater unit price volatility. These results are...

In this paper, we study the efficacy of government-mandated mobility restrictions on curbing urban mobility, and estimate the spatial heterogeneity in lockdown compliance. We explore the role of cash subsidies disbursed during lockdown as well as socioeconomic differences across neighborhoods in...

We estimate the likelihood of financial distress of U.S. hospitals in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic using AHA Annual Survey data for 2011-2019 and smartphone mobility data for 2020. We find that while the average likelihood of distress across all hospitals is 28.53 % in 2020, slightly...

Rent stabilization is valuable to occupying tenants because it limits rent growth. Assessing the rent discount implied by this policy is challenging because the counterfactual rents that rent-stabilized units would command in the unregulated market are unobservable. Using novel data from 2002 to...

This paper explores the roles of agglomeration economies and aggregate human capital in accounting for productivity variations across sub-national areas in 16 Latin American and Caribbean countries. We find that, while there is a strong and statistically positive relationship between worker...

We estimate direct and spillover effects of social distancing measures intended to slow the spread of COVID-19 at the U.S. county level using mobility indicators based on cellphone data. We find that spillover effects range between a third and a half of the direct effect depending on the...