This paper presents an analysis of urban spatial structure and its trends in the OECD between 2001 and 2011. It does so by using a standardised definition of urban areas in 29 OECD countries as composed of high density cores and their respective commuting zones. While urban population is growing...

An increasing amount of empirical evidence documents that city-size distribution within a country follows a power law, often in the form of Zipf’s law. This paper provides new comparative evidence on city size distribution across OECD countries. It uses a database where urban agglomerations...

South Africa has achieved remarkable progress in educational attainment relative to other emerging countries, but the quality of basic education for a large fraction of the Black African population is still very low. This study identifies several hurdles to the upgrading of basic education...

"Murtin examines the long-term causes of health improvements over the last two centuries. Focusing on the relative importance of income and education, Murtin finds that education alone accounts for the bulk of health improvements since 1870, and explains the strong correlation between longevity...

Polycentric development is a widely-used term both in academic research and in the normative agenda. However, its theoretical foundations and economic implications are still unknown and the concept of polycentricity still does not have a shared definition, or a shared measurement method. The aim...