Existing series suggest wages in London were substantially higher than in other European cities from 1650 to 1800. This paper presents new evidence from the construction sites that supplied the underlying wage data, and uncovers the contractual and organisational context in which it was...

We analyze investment decisions when information is costly, with and without delegation to an agent. We use a rational-inattention model and compare it with a canonical signal-extraction model. We identify three "investment conditions". In "sour" conditions, no information is acquired and no...

This paper studies technology adoption and factory location in England during the Industrial Revolution. First, we document a negative relationship between industrialization in the 19th century and pre-industrial economic activities. Second, we show that while local self-governing institutions...

Does a location's growth benefit or suffer from being geographically close to large economic centers? Spatial proximity may lead to competition and hurt growth, but it may also generate positive spillovers and enhance growth. Using data on U.S. counties and metro areas for the period 1840-2017,...

We study the determinants of the spatial distribution of patent inventors at the county level for Great Britain between 1700-1850. Our empirical analysis rests on the localization model by Bottazzi et al. (2007) and on the related estimation procedure by Bottazzi and Gragnolati (2015). Such an...

In this article, the question of the location of exporters of manufactured goods within a country is investigated. Data from 354 magisterial districts in South Africa are used with a variety of estimators to identify the determinants of regional manufactured exports. It is found that the...

The development of pre-industrial Europe was driven by the expansion of trade. This paper describes the patterns of trade and shows how they can be understood in terms of differences in trading costs. It discusses how the different levels of trade?from local to transoceanic-contributed, both...

We use a unique administrative dataset of Spanish exporters to document the existence of exporters' geographical agglomeration by export destination. We reveal that firms selling to countries with worse business regulations, a dissimilar language and a different currency tend to cluster...

Quantitative spatial economics (QSE) specifies various components such as preferences, production technology, and frictions for the movement of goods, people, and ideas. Despite the long literature on endogenous location decisions, the question of how these specifications affect resulting...

Variation in urban density is a core determinant of patterns of productivity within countries, but does it also shape patterns of trade across countries? We develop a strategy to estimate the extent to which local population density boosts productivity in each industry. Combining these...