This paper quantifies the causal effects of various types of investments in the road and railroad networks on economic growth in Chinese cities and regions. We separate out the influences of changes in access to markets that have come through better inter-regional and international transport...

In this paper, we examine the determinants of Brazilian city growth between 1970 and 2000. We consider a model of a city, which combines aspects of standard urban economics and the new economic geography literatures. For the empirical analysis, we constructed a dataset of 123 Brazilian...

The share of urban population in Brazil has increased from 58 to 80 percent between 1970 and 2000 and all net population growth over the next thirty years is predicted to be in cities. This paper explores population growth and its implications for economic dynamics and income generation among...

This paper explores some costs associated with environmental regulation. We focus on regulation pertaining to ground-level ozone (O3) and its effects on two manufacturing industries — industrial organic chemicals (SIC 2865-9) and miscellaneous plastic products (SIC 308). Both are major...

This paper examines equilibrium and changes in equilibrium in international trade under conditions of increasing returns to scale in production. The first section of the paper solves for stable equilibrium positions between two trading partners; the reader should find this section a refinement...

This paper presents a simple general equilibrium model of an economy where production and consumption occur in cities. The paper focuses on the different sizes and types of cities generated by market forces and whether these market forces generate optimally size cities. Before the model is...

In this paper, the Losch-Beckmann hierarchy model of city size is evaluated in terms of its economic content and consistency. It is shown that the model violates basic economic principles. Consequently, an alternative framework is outlined, and for a simple example the properties of the model...

This paper discusses whether market-achieved city size is greater or less than optimum city size. The divergence between optimum and achieved city size is due to external diseconomies such as pollution. Imposing an optimal tax on pollution may not, as is commonly thought, cause even an initial...

GDP growth is often measured poorly for countries and rarely measured at all for cities. We propose a readily available proxy: satellite data on lights at night. Our statistical framework uses light growth to supplement existing income growth measures. The framework is applied to countries with...

Using three waves of survey data from fishing villages in Aceh, Indonesia for 2005-2009, we examine the determinants of local volunteer labor after the tsunami. Pre-existing social capital and the form of aid delivery (but not trauma) strongly affect village volunteerism initially, but these...