We develop a two-region population growth model of economic geography and show that a process of urbanization has a substantial impact on the evolution of manufacturing real wages. Whereas real wages decline as the population increases when the spatial structure of the economy is fixed, they...

Empirical studies consistently report that labour productivity and TFP rise with city size. The reason is that cities attract the most productive agents, select the best of them, and make the selected ones even more productive via various agglomeration economies. This paper provides a...

Using a large sample of US urban areas, we provide systematic evidence that mean household income rises with city ('agglomeration'), that this effect is stronger for the top of the income distribution ('polarization'), and that household income inequality increases at a decreasing rate in city...

We compare the impact of falling transport costs, borne by firms, and decreasing tariffs, borne by either firms or consumers, on the regional distribution of economic activities. Our main result shows that tariffs and tranport costs play symmetric roles in that a decrease in either of them...

We develop a spatial general equilibrium model in which the absence of trade is an endogenous outcome and we show that trade is not a necessary condition for agglomeration to arise. More precisely, extending the model developed by Ottaviano et al. [13], we show that equilibria without trade...

Large cities produce more output per capita than small cities. This may occur because more talented individuals sort into large cities, because large cities select more productive entrepreneurs and firms, or because of agglomeration economies. We develop a model of systems of cities that...

We develop a framework that integrates natural advantage, agglomeration economies, and firm selection to explain why large cities are both more productive and more unequal than small towns. Our model highlights interesting complementarities among those factors and it matches a number of key...

We develop a framework that integrates natural advantage, agglomeration economies, and firm selection to explain why large cities are both more productive and more unequal than small towns. Our model highlights interesting complementarities among those factors and it matches a number of key...

Large cities produce more output per capita than small cities. This higher productivity may occur because more talented individuals sort into large cities, because large cities select more productive entrepreneurs and firms, or because of agglomeration economies. We develop a model of systems of...