Yuanhang Yu (LSE）

论文题目

Pollution Without Borders:  Transboundary Air Pollution and the Geography of Pollutant Control Policy

Abstract

Air pollution disperses across political boundaries, yet many environmental policies regulate specific polluted locations. This paper studies how cross-boundary transport of fine particulate matter PM2.5 changes the welfare effect and design of pollutant control policy in China. Using particle trajectory data from atmospheric transport models, we construct bilateral flow matrices that measure the transboundary air pollution in China. Three patterns emerge: (1) Transboundary pollution is heterogeneous across space, ranging from less than 10% to over 50% of local PM2.5 concentrations; (2) Bilateral pollutant transport networks remain stable over time, enabling long-term policy coordination without frequent recalibration; and (3) Economically developed provinces in China receive more transboundary pollution yet achieve larger pollution reduction. We develop a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model that incorporates pollutant transport, trade, and migration. Using this model, we estimate that transboundary air pollution creates a 1% national welfare loss relative to a counterfactual where pollution remains local. We evaluate China's Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan and compare it to alternative allocation rules. Reallocating abatement to high-spillover upwind provinces based on marginal social welfare of emission tax improves aggregate welfare by 0.18% relative to the actual policy. The findings reveal welfare gains from accounting for spatial externalities in policy design.

链接https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5h4gmh1py3h0knp9lm75o/Paper___Spatial_Externality_and_Environmental_Policy_Design.pdf?rlkey=bs0th84j3r7vrns5w3ae8l1jd&e=1&st=ste0ig6f&dl=0

Po-Shyan Wu (Indiana)

论文题目

Assault on the Low-Wage Economy: Federal Wage-Hour Law and Southern Industrial Development

Abstract

This paper uses newly digitized data to study the effects of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 on the industrial development of the U.S. South. Implemented at a time of large regional wage disparities, the federal minimum wage and maximum hour regulations disproportionately affected the low-wage South. Contrary to the findings that minimum wage increments have no or small employment effects in more modern settings, we find substantial employment reductions in the manufacturing industries. This paper then builds and calibrates a general equilibrium model to formalize and quantify three arguments centering the regional development-national standards debate: the interstate commerce channel, the reverse structural change channel, and the industry upgrading channel. This is achieved by modeling multiple regions connected through trade, multiple industries connected through input-output linkages, a labor supply side characterized by a Roy model of worker selection, and a labor demand side implied by firm-level technology choices.

链接

https://po-poswu.github.io/papers/paper0/FLSA38_paper.pdf

Jacob Wright (Minnesota) 

论文题目

On the Spatial Distribution of Colleges

Abstract

Given the decentralized nature of American higher education, there is substantial cross-state heterogeneity in: (1) in-/out-of-state tuition, (2) spending per student, and (3) in-/out-of-state capacity. Empirically, I show that larger and wealthier states charge higher in-/out-of-state tuition, spend more per student, and offer fewer seats to out-of-state students. I develop a novel model that embeds a heterogeneous-agent lifecycle structure within a quantitative spatial framework, featuring an endogenous distribution of college quality and firm activity across locations, as well as migration-based sorting of students and workers. I estimate the model to replicate cross-state dynamics of migration and education choices, wages, and college characteristics. The model rationalizes key empirical observations and provides a clear economic understanding of why college policies differ across states. For a fixed level of college expenditures, optimal federal policy increases aggregate welfare by 3.3%. The federal solution guides a policy analysis, which shows that spatial policies are markedly more effective at increasing welfare than standard proposals.

链接

https://www.jacob-wright.me/_files/ugd/5f97f5_b827be76dffa43faadc057606359e32b.pdf?index=true

Martin Wiegand (Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)

论文题目

Cities with Benefits

Abstract

This paper studies how local economic conditions shape the optimal design of unemployment benefits across space. I develop a theoretical framework that characterizes the insurance value and fiscal costs of unemployment benefits across locations as a function of (i) local prices, (ii) behavioral responses in unemployment duration and (iii) distortions to location choice. I estimate the fiscal costs of the unemployment duration and migration responses using novel quasi-experimental variation from Germany’s Hartz IV reform, which tied benefit levels to local rents for long-term unemployed individuals. Unemployment durations respond similarly to benefit changes in highand low-price locations. However, higher benefits in expensive regions attract jobseekers, raising fiscal costs. My findings imply that indexing unemployment benefits to local prices makes benefits excessively generous in high-price locations, and that redistribution towards regions with lower prices yields sizable welfare gains

链接

https://m-wiegand.github.io/pdf/JMP_Wiegand.pdf

Zhichun Wang (Yale) 

论文题目

The Expansion and Dynamic Equilibrium Effects of Institutional Landlords

Abstract

This paper studies how dynamically formed cost efficiencies from scope and density drive institutional landlords’ expansion and, in turn, alter the distribution of welfare across heterogeneous households in single-family housing markets. Institutional landlords convert owner-occupied homes into large, spatially clustered rental portfolios. They constrain households' access to homeownership while expanding rental opportunities. This leads households to reoptimize between buying and renting, as buyers may face higher prices while renters may benefit from expanded choice sets. We build a dynamic equilibrium model of landlord investment with three key features: (i) oligopolistic landlords' investment determines the evolution of housing supply structure, (ii) portfolio size and density introduce endogenous variation in landlord costs, and (iii) households substitute within and across buying and renting in an integrated choice set. We estimate the model using firm-property-level data from 2013 to 2022 in the Atlanta metropolitan area. We find that institutional landlords' expansion achieved a 60.03% reduction in maintenance cost from economies of scope and density. Households' total welfare increased, with varying effects across renters and buyers. The majority of renters gained from expanded rental supply, while a small fraction of renters, together with most buyers, lost from diminished access to affordable homeownership. Our findings have significant policy implications for regulating institutional landlords’ expansion in the single-family home market.

链接

https://zwangecon.github.io/draft/landlord_wang_jmp.pdf

Óscar Vilargunter (Toulouse) 

论文题目

Spatial Effects of the Minimum Wage 

Abstract

I study how a uniform national minimum wage affects employment and migration when local labor markets differ in productivity and are connected through costly migration. I show that Spain’s 22 percent minimum-wage increase in 2019 triggered a relocation of workers toward more productive locations, concentrated among jobs at the new minimum wage. To quantify the implications of this reallocation, I build a spatial search and matching model with heterogenous locations, migration costs, and a national minimum wage. In the model, the minimum wage affects employment by making some jobs too costly to sustain but also raises the value of low productivity employment in productive areas, making migration worthwhile for workers who previously found these opportunities unattractive. I estimate the model using pre-reform administrative data and simulate the 2019 reform as a counterfactual exercise. National unemployment rises only modestly, from 12.9 to 13.7 percent, because nearly half of the job losses are absorbed through migration toward productive locations. The minimum wage thus acts not only as a wage floor but also as a reallocation policy that polarized employment, widening spatial gaps in job opportunities.

链接

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NcMdmEwM_iVl3LZezKO1y9XD2gsyx1W-/view

Michael Tueting (St. Gallen)

论文题目

Climate Change, Income Inequality, and Migration in a Spatial Economy

Abstract

Negative local labor market shocks create strong incentives to migrate, yet low-income households often remain in place. This paper studies how income shapes migration responses to climate change and the resulting welfare effects. Using Brazilian Census data, I show that high-income individuals are systematically more mobile than low-income individuals from the same origin. To interpret this pattern and quantify the impacts of climate change, I develop a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model with monetary migration costs and liquidity constraints, embedded in a two-sector trade framework in which rising temperatures depress agricultural productivity. The quantitative results imply sharply regressive welfare losses: in already hot regions, low-income households experience permanent consumption declines of about 0.6-0.9% per period, with worst-case losses near 3.3%, while richer households are largely insulated. Two mechanisms drive these disparities: climate shocks reduce agricultural wages in hot areas, and monetary migration costs disproportionately burden low-income individuals, limiting their ability to relocate in response. A counterfactual policy that makes low-income individuals as mobile as high-income individuals-modeled as a targeted subsidy-raises low-income individuals' welfare by 24%, offsets 4% of climate losses, and increases aggregate output by relocating labor to more productive regions. Adaptation to climate change depends not only on where productivity shocks occur but also on who can afford to relocate. Consequently, adverse shocks tend to fall disproportionately on those unable to afford relocation.

链接

https://mtueting.github.io/job_market_paper/jmp_tueting.pdf

Tuyetanh Tran (Yale) 

论文题目

The Trade-Offs of Curbside Parking: Evidence from Demand-Based Pricing

Abstract

City governments face a trade-off in managing curb space: providing parking to facilitate access to consumption amenities and generate revenue, versus allocating it to alternative land uses. In this paper, we quantify the welfare implications of curbside parking and evaluate alternative policies for managing curb space through parking instruments. We develop a structural model of drivers' joint destination and parking decisions: drivers choose which destination to visit under imperfect information about parking availability, then decide where to park near the chosen destination. We estimate the model using high-frequency data on metered parking transactions and GPS data on visits to points of interest in San Francisco, one of the few cities that have implemented demand-based pricing for curbside parking. We find that, while drivers value curbside parking, the present discounted value of parking revenue and driver surplus generally falls short of local assessed land values, which proxy for the economic value of land uses. Compared to a revenue-maximizing uniform pricing scheme, San Francisco's demand-based pricing generates about 30% more revenue while reducing cruising trips by nearly 70%. Our counterfactuals show that reducing parking supply by roughly 6% and lowering the status quo demand-based prices by $1.25 citywide preserves parking welfare, with only a modest revenue loss, while freeing curb space for other uses.

链接

https://tuyetanhltran.github.io/downloads/JMP_Tuyetanh_Tran.pdf

Anya Tarascina (Wisconsin) 

论文题目

The Value of Intermediation in Bikeshare

Abstract

Transportation markets often face imbalances between demand and supply when agents do not internalize the system-wide effects of their choices. Intermediaries arise in such markets to ameliorate these imbalances. This paper studies the role of intermediation in New York City’s Citi Bike system, where the operator rebalances bikes between locations to mediate demand between current and future consumers. I develop and estimate a spatial matching model using granular trip and bike availability data from 2018–2024. A unique aspect of this setting is that it allows me to consider the impact of network expansion, as the system expanded rapidly during this period. The model consists of consumer demand for traveling by bike, matching with bikes at the origin and docks at the destination, and a steady state equilibrium distribution of consumers and bikes in the system. This allows me to quantify how consumer travel patterns change as a result of changes to waiting times and travel times. In a counterfactual with no rebalancing, I find that the number of consumers using the system falls sharply due to longer wait times.

链接

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vGtxIVARUSudMnTnaGMGfVFbJCXYtmh0/view

Idil Tanrisever (UCI) 

论文题目

Upzoning and Neighborhood Change: Evidence from Los Angeles

Abstract

Housing affordability is a pressing challenge in the United States, with rising costs placing significant financial strain on communities. In response, local governments are exploring policies to enhance residential development and increase housing supply. A common strategy is upzoning, which involves relaxing land use regulations to facilitate denser housing. Using property characteristics and consumer trace data, I show that easing zoning requirements increases housing supply, as measured by the number of units, without altering the size of units. I also find that upzoning leads to higher house prices. The zoning change also triggers demographic shifts, including a greater share of in-migrant households that are non-Hispanic White. On the other hand, out-migration does not vary by race or ethnicity. I also find that in-migrants do not come from higher-income neighborhoods, but out-migrants tend to move to tracts with slightly higher median incomes. Additionally, I assess spillover effects within a 2-mile radius of the treated zones, revealing delayed increases in housing units, and house prices within a mile of Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) areas. These findings are robust to a triple-difference-in-differences specification, which helps rule out confounding factors. The results for housing development and demographics remain consistent with the baseline findings, while the estimates for property prices are directionally similar but no longer statistically significant.

链接

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5010930

Caterina Soto Vieira (LSE)

论文题目

Home Production in the City

Abstract

By 2050, two thirds of the world’s population is predicted to live in cities, predominantly mega-cities. Agglomeration drives up productivity, but the commuting costs may act as a brake by incentivizing specialization within the household, and thus potentially decreasing female labor force participation. Using origin-destination travel data from the mega city of Sao Paulo in Brazil, I document that labor force partici- ˜ pation declines sharply with distance from the city center, a spatial gradient largely driven by married women. When women work, they not only face lower wages, but also commute in slower modes of transport, relying more often on public transport and less on driving than men. To quantify the implications of these patterns for the economy, I model the trade-off between benefits of agglomeration and the cost of commuting using a quantitative spatial framework in which couples and singles decide where to live and whether and where to work. My model reveals that if women faced the same commuting costs as men, labor force participation would increase by 10.3 percentage points—an effect larger than equalizing labor market returns by gender—with especially strong impacts for married women on the urban periphery. This shows that investing in transportation infrastructure that makes commuting equal by gender would draw many women into the labor market, substantially narrowing the gender gap in labor supply.

链接

https://caterinasoto.github.io/PDF-website/jmp_sotovieira.pdf

Christopher Sims (Northwestern)

论文题目

The Origins of the Nitrogen Revolution

Abstract

Many technologies raise productivity in locations constrained by their natural endowments yet diminish specialization across space. We show that the first commercial nitrogen fertilizers in history were one such “converging” technology. Leveraging natural variation in soil nitrogen deficiency and the sudden introduction of Peruvian guano and nitrates to 19th-century England, we provide two main empirical findings. First, locations specialized on the basis of their natural endowments before the introduction of fertilizer: nitrogen-deficient places devoted less land to nitrogen-intensive crops. Second, combining newly-digitized data and a difference-in-differences design, we show that these nitrogen-deficient places substantially reallocated toward nitrogen-intensive crops after fertilizer was introduced, indicating convergence across space. To quantify the welfare impact of this “converging” technology, we embed fertilizer into a quantitative spatial model of the English agricultural sector with realistic geography. The welfare gains from fertilizer were equivalent to two decades of annual productivity growth in agriculture. However, convergence implies a reduction in the gains from trade, which offsets up to 10% of these welfare gains under plausible trade cost regimes.

链接

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hk40ih4v7uoxsxp73jk74/JMP_Nitrogen.pdf?rlkey=wj4a4a218rufvy93se4hsorpm&e=1&st=agna1ymt&dl=0

Jacob Shepard (Arizona State)

论文题目

Spatial Mobility and the Macroeconomic Effects of Housing Policy

Abstract

Since 1970, home values relative to incomes across the United States have increased by over 50 percent, while California’s home-value-to-income ratio has more than doubled amid the adoption of restrictive housing policies and a reversal in migration flows. In this paper, I investigate the macroeconomic consequences of housing policies in an economy with spatially mobile, heterogeneous households. I develop a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model incorporating life-cycle decisions about housing, migration, and savings, with locations that include amenity and productivity differences. I then calibrate a two-location version of the model to represent California and the broader U.S. economy in 2019. Relaxing California’s housing restrictions to 1970 levels reduces the home-value-to-income ratio by over a fifth, increases measured US output by 2.7 percent, and yields welfare gains of 6.2 percent for current Californians when accounting for transition dynamics. Spatial mobility is a key mechanism, and accounts for over three quarters of the increase in non-housing output. I further modify the calibration to match key moments from 1970 and simulate the transition to the 2019 economy, reflecting changes in housing policy and California’s property tax regime. I find that while most Californian households in 1970 benefited from the changes to housing policies, subsequent generations experienced substantial welfare losses, with Californian newborn welfare declining over 14 percent. Altogether, the findings underscore that housing policies can have significant welfare effects, non-trivially larger than the effect on measured GDP and heterogeneous throughout time.

链接

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zrtrcuUsrhCzKdhleVanER5uNFy87qE5/view

Jin Seok Park (USC)

论文题目

Priced Out of Entrepreneurship? Rising Local Home Prices Lower Economic Opportunities for Young Renters

Abstract

Rising housing costs reshape who can afford to become an entrepreneur. This paper examines how housing affordability influences entry into entrepreneurship, focusing on young individuals who lack housing collateral and are more exposed to liquidity constraints as affordability declines. While prior studies emphasize how higher house prices can encourage entrepreneurship among homeowners through collateral gains, much less is known about how worsening affordability affects those without housing wealth. We show that examining the non-owner side is essential to understanding the broader link between housing markets and entrepreneurship. We build a stylized life-cycle model in which renters and homeowners are exogenously separated, and show that these groups respond to changes in housing affordability through opposite mechanisms: a collateral channel for owners and a liquidity channel for renters. Using U.S. Census microdata aggregated to MSA-year panels and an instrumental variable strategy interacting national housing demand shocks with local housing supply elasticities, we find that declining affordability significantly reduces self-employment among young adults. The model and evidence together highlight housing affordability as a fundamental determinant of who can take entrepreneurial risks. Beyond housing policy, improving affordability is crucial for expanding economic opportunity, fostering social mobility, and sustaining local dynamism.

链接

https://jspark-econ.github.io/JS_JMP_Draft.pdf

Bas Sanders (Harvard)

论文题目

A New Bayesian Bootstrap for Quantitative Trade and Spatial Models

Abstract

Economists use quantitative trade and spatial models to make counterfactual predictions. Because such predictions aim to inform policy decisions, it is important to communicate the uncertainty surrounding them. Three key challenges arise in this setting: the data are dyadic and exhibit complex dependence; the number of interacting units is typically small; and counterfactual predictions depend on the data in two distinct ways—through the estimation of structural parameters and through the description of the status quo. I propose a new Bayesian bootstrap procedure that is tailored to this setting and that addresses these challenges. The procedure is simple to implement and provides both finite-sample Bayesian and asymptotic frequentist guarantees. I illustrate the practical advantages of this approach by revisiting the applications in Waugh (2010), Caliendo and Parro (2015), and Artuç, Chaudhuri, and McLaren (2010).

链接

https://sandersbas.github.io/files/NBBQTSM_2025_11_21.pdf

Álvaro Sánchez-Leache (CEMFI)

论文题目

The Internal Geography of America’s Housing Crisis

Abstract

Why are cities in America struggling to supply housing at affordable prices? The conventional view is that housing regulations restrict the expansion of big, high-productivity cities. I document how shifting demand within these cities towards costly margins of urban growth —infill and redevelopment, as opposed to sprawl— has been central to rising unaffordability since at least 1990. I measure this by combining satellite imagery, digitized building footprints and Census data to track development and redevelopment at 30x30 meter resolution nationwide. Big cities increasingly relied on costly infill and redevelopment as commuting speed stagnation and the revival of urban amenities concentrated demand in already-urbanized areas. A quantitative spatial model reveals that relaxing zoning regulations to small-city levels —mostly easing suburban expansion— would only modestly increase big-city populations, since they would still be bound by the costs of redevelopment in dense areas where demand concentrates.

链接

https://asanchezleache.github.io/JMP/geography_housing_crisis.pdf

Matteo Saccarola (Berkeley)

论文题目

Geographic Price Extrapolation, Learning, and Housing Search: Evidence from Danish Movers

Abstract

Using population-wide Danish administrative registers on housing transactions, I document an asymmetric, hockey-stick relationship between origin market prices and overpayment for comparable homes. Quantitatively, the elasticity of overpayment with respect to the origin-destination price difference is 3.9 percent (p < 0.01) when movers relocate from more expensive to cheaper housing markets. In contrast, buyers moving to more expensive locations exhibit little systematic overpayment, and their purchase prices are unrelated to prices at origin. I interpret these patterns through a housing search model in which buyers enter with price beliefs anchored in their origin market and update those beliefs gradually during search. Despite homogeneous learning, endogenous stopping generates the observed asymmetry at purchase: buyers predisposed to overpay transact quickly before fully learning the local price level, while those predisposed to underpay search longer and converge toward local prices. The model yields additional predictions that I test using administrative and survey data. The evidence supports origin-based price extrapolation with subsequent learning rather than preference-based explanations such as reference dependence. A calibration illustrates that even a small inflow of misperceiving nonlocal buyers can raise equilibrium prices in destination markets.

链接

https://matteosaccarola.github.io/files/msaccarola_JMP.pdf

Brietta Russell (Oregon)

论文题目

Short-Term Rental Regulations, Enforcement, and Host Behavior: Evidence from Denver

Abstract

In 2017, the City of Denver implemented short-term rental regulations to protect affordable housing and preserve neighborhoods. Along with standard registration requirements, the ordinance imposed a primary residence condition intended to reduce the number of properties removed from the long-term rental market. I use two-way fixed effects and synthetic difference-in-differences to estimate the effect of short-term rental regulations on Airbnb supply. In the year following regulations, total active supply falls by 24.8%. Commercial hosts are most likely to respond, and results show that regulations increase the probability a commercial listing permanently exits the market by 10.5 percentage points. I observe no evidence that hosts with a lower number of properties are significantly more likely to exit the market following regulations. Surprisingly, active enforcement of the policy through citations does not have an additional effect on supply. 

链接

https://www.briettarussell.com/research

Francesco Ruggieri (Chicago)

论文题目

Overlapping Jurisdictions and the Provision of Local Public Goods in U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

Local governments in the United States are vertically differentiated: in a given location, multiple overlapping jurisdictions provide distinct local public services and draw revenue from shared portions of the property tax base. This paper estimates the fiscal spillovers generated by this structure and proposes a mechanism that internalizes them in local policy choice. I assemble a new georeferenced dataset covering the universe of local government boundaries and nominal property tax rates nationwide over the past two decades. Using a dynamic regression discontinuity design, I estimate fiscal spillovers from narrowly approved property tax referenda. To extrapolate beyond effects identified at the approval threshold, I develop a spatial equilibrium model with overlapping jurisdictions and majority voting over the provision of local public goods. I use the model to quantify spillovers for all school districts and municipal governments in the United States and find sizable effects. I then evaluate a policy that (i) informs voters about cross-jurisdiction spillovers and (ii) applies symmetric intergovernmental transfers (taxes or subsidies) upon approval of a spending change. The counterfactual regime yields aggregate welfare gains.

链接

https://francescoruggieri.github.io/files/FrancescoRuggieri_JMP.pdf

Vincent Rollet (MIT)

论文题目

Zoning and the Dynamics of Urban Redevelopment

Abstract

Cities increasingly grow through redevelopment—demolishing old buildings to make way for new ones. This paper studies this process and how it is influenced by zoning, which regulates the size and uses of new buildings, using New York City as a case study. I build the first parcel-level panel of a city’s buildings, zoning, and floorspace prices. This data allows me to estimate a new dynamic spatial equilibrium model of floorspace supply and demand. I validate the model using quasi-experimental variation from recent zoning reforms and apply it to evaluate the effects of relaxing regulation on construction and affordability. While zoning strongly constrains city growth, the effects of relaxing regulation take decades to materialize and are limited in inexpensive or densely built areas. This is due to the large fixed costs of redevelopment, which rise sharply with the size of existing buildings. These costs generate considerable persistence in city structure and substantially lower the expected gains from relaxing zoning. Furthermore, due to migration, the affordability benefits of zoning reform largely accrue to households outside the rezoned neighborhoods.

链接

https://vrollet.github.io/files/city_structure.pdf

Christina Qiu (Yale)

论文题目

Endogenous Transfer Networks Under Spatial Risk

Abstract

This paper studies how digital payment technologies affect the amount of insurance households can attain under spatially-correlated shocks when risk-sharing links are endogenously formed. I develop a quantitative model in which households form transfer networks over space, treating their own partnerships as substitutable and others' linking decisions as strategic complements to their own. Households jointly agree to strengthen their partnerships but can unilaterally weaken them, leading to multiple stable network configurations. I use the model to quantify welfare gains from informal transfer networks in Tanzania after the 2008 introduction of mobile money, which lowered the costs of transporting money across space. By 2028, the diffusion of mobile money generates average welfare gains of 0.9%, about two-thirds of which arise from network reorganization in response to the technology. Welfare gains are progressive, driven by an enhanced redistributive role of transfers but diminished insurance benefits.

链接

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C0zubnZu6r3ItUmKTRkIensLyt4X417J/view

Zeyi Qian (Clark University)

论文题目

Trade Costs, Entry Costs, and Regional Economic Growth in China

Abstract

This paper examines sectoral growth patterns across Chinese provinces during the country’s economic takeoff in the early 2000s, following major policy reforms including trade liberalization, infrastructure expansion, business climate improvements, and relaxed rural-to-urban migration restrictions. We develop a multi-sector, multi-region spatial general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms á la Melitz-Chaney to analyze how these reforms interacted to shape regional economic growth. We quantify the model for the Chinese economy and conduct counterfactuals to identify the key mechanisms driving regional development. We find that reductions in trade costs and lowered entry barriers facilitate firm entry and intensify competition. Together, these factors shape regional specialization and China’s overall economic growth. Our decomposition exercises reveal that lowered business entry costs played a larger role than the reduction in trade costs in promoting the growth of real wages, especially in inland provinces. This operates through a selection effect, where more productive firms expand and force the least productive ones to exit, and through increased variety, which effectively lowers the price index.

链接

https://zeyiqian.github.io/Paper/JMP_ZQ.pdf

Helena Pedrotti (NYU)

论文题目

Local Discretion in Low-Income Housing Policy: Evidence from France

Abstract

Governments seek to promote affordable housing in mixed-income neighborhoods while preserving local municipal discretion over land use. Municipalities who retain local discretion better cater to local preferences, but only internalize preferences of incumbent residents and underprovide affordable housing. I quantify the trade-off in allowing municipal discretion over affordable housing provision when residents dislike low-income neighbors. I leverage a discontinuity in a French policy which allows municipalities to build more social housing or pay a fine. Limiting local discretion increases social housing by 31% and induces a compositional shift in private housing: high-income households move out and low-income households move in. I then estimate a structural location choice model to quantify the welfare effects of local discretion over social housing. Using the policy to identify preferences for low-income neighbors, I find that all households dislike low-income peers, especially high-income households who are willing-to-pay €538 per month to avoid a 20 p.p. increase in the share of low-income residents. Prohibiting local discretion by distributing social housing uniformly across municipalities increases the median municipal share of low-income households from 24% to 26%, although it would be twice larger without subsequent migration. While entirely removing local discretion reduces socioeconomic segregation, private residents bear large welfare cost which are unlikely to be offset by the welfare gains to social housing recipients moving to wealthier neighborhoods.

链接

https://helena-pedrotti.github.io/assets/docs/jmp.pdf