Urban systems, and regions more generally, are the epicenters of many of today's social issues. Yet they are also the global drivers of technological innovation and thus it is critical that we understand their vulnerabilities and what makes them resilient to different types of shocks. We take...

An issue often confronting economic development agencies is how to minimize unemployment due to disruptions like technological change, trade wars, recessions, or other economic shocks. Decision makers are left to craft policies that can absorb surplus labor with as little pain to workers as...

Cities are among the best examples of complex systems. The adaptive components of a city, such as its people, firms, institutions, and physical structures, form intricate and often non-intuitive interdependencies with one another. These interdependencies can be quantified and represented as...

An international push to decarbonize economies has initiated a major transition in the global energy system and has begun to disrupt the intricate network of energy trade. As trade patterns begin to reconfigure, it is important that policy makers understand how vulnerabilities of the existing...

We analyze how a region’s industrial structure affects its productivity and its resilience to shocks. Using co-occurrence analysis, we construct an interdependence network of U.S. industries. For each U.S. metropolitan area, we then calculate an aggregate metric of this network called economic...

The market for cobalt, which is one of the elements needed in the production of electric batteries, is increasing in importance and demand globally. Key players in this market include the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which maintains a large share of world reserves, and China, which plays...

A key driver of urbanization is the pursuit of economic opportunities in cities. One such opportunity is the promise of higher wages in larger cities, a phenomenon known as the urban wage premium. While an urban wage premium has been well-documented among U.S. metropolitan areas, little is known...

As cities increase in size, total wages grow superlinearly, meaning that average wages are higher in larger cities. This phenomenon, known as the urban wage premium, supports the notion that urbanization and the growth of cities contribute positively to human well-being. However, it remains...