Regional Science and Urban Economics最新文献

Diversity might reduce the ability of small-scale communities to protect local resources through its adverse impact on collective action and individual attachment. Using geocoded data on more than 1500 Grade-3 gas leaks in 2016 across Boston and Cambridge, MA, we show that when a leak emerges in a narrowly-defined area with higher ethno-racial fractionalization it enjoys lower chances of end-year reparation. After accounting for socio-economic and infrastructural factors, our preferred estimate suggests that moving from the 10th to the 90th percentile of the fractionalization distribution is associated to a 5.7 percentage point decrease in the probability of reparation, compared with an already low average of 3.7%. This result is robust to different definitions of the community surrounding a leak and to the inclusion of competing measures of diversity. Consistent with our framework, social capital appears to be especially lower in communities fragmented across ethno-racial lines. In turn, lower social capital is negatively associated to leak reparation.

Regional exposure to Chinese import competition has often been linked to support for the Leave option in the 2016 UK EU membership referendum. Looking at 143 harmonised International Territorial Level 3 (ITL3) regions covering England and Wales, and using data on the density of online social ties between them, I show that regional support for leaving the EU was also associated with exposure in socially connected regions. I first delineate 18 commuting zones based on interregional flows over three Census years. For each region, I then construct a measure of own exposure to Chinese import competition and a measure of exposure in a set of social neighbours located outside its commuting zone. Exploiting variation within commuting zones, and using an instrumental variable approach, I find that the two measures have comparable positive effects on the regional share of the Leave vote. In a series of checks, I do not find evidence that the effect of social neighbours’ exposure is driven by an economic channel or a relationship between import competition and social ties. I also corroborate the regional results using survey data on vote choice. I interpret these findings as indicative of social spillovers between local labour markets: information flows from social neighbours are a likely channel behind the estimated spillover effects on voting outcomes.

A substantial literature demonstrates that zoning restrictions on building height or density lower supply and increase housing prices. However, negative externalities due to household preferences for lower neighborhood density could justify restrictions on private developers. Thus building density in a laissez-faire city may be above the welfare maximizing level. The potential external costs of height and density are tested here and found to be substantial. Increased building separation appears to mitigate the external cost of height. This implies that some level of density or floor regulation (FAR) may be welfare-enhancing, and that the gap between price and marginal construction cost may overstate the social cost of zoning because households value lower density. The analysis considers residential density and not employment density which can give rise to other types of externalities.

How do temporary shocks affect the spatial distribution of employment in agriculture? I investigate this question by examining the 1975 frost that damaged coffee trees in Brazil. I find that the frost persistently affected the spatial distribution of employment in agriculture. To identify the effects of the capital destruction from the frost, I compare changes in agricultural employment across local economies that had different coffee tree densities right before the frost and that were differently affected by the extreme weather. The frost resulted in a persistent decline in agricultural employment. The findings are consistent with a history versus expectations model in which fixed and specific capital (such as coffee trees) prevents multiple equilibria despite strategic complementarities in crop choice.

This paper exploits a quasi-natural experiment with the exogenous shock of capital relocation in ancient China from Nanjing to Beijing in 1421 CE during the Ming Dynasty, to investigate the relationship between political governance and urban systems. We constructed a unique historical panel dataset that measures population distributions among Chinese counties spanning over centuries. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, our results reveal that after the capital relocation, the effect of localities' distance to Beijing, the newly established capital at that time, on local population size turns to be significantly negative. Moreover, these effects still persisted in the next dynasty and modern China. Furthermore, the results indicate that the impact of the capital relocation on population distribution occur through two major channels of political governance: delivery and national security. The causal relationship between capital relocation and population distribution is demonstrated to be robust using a variety of identification strategies and robustness checks.

This paper investigates gender as a new source of heterogeneity in the urban wage premium, using a representative panel of 1.2 million worker observations in Great Britain over the period 1999–2019. Pre-2008, women's urban wage premium was more than twice as large as men's (2.8% versus 1.2%), but this difference disappears during the Financial Crisis as women's urban wage premium drastically and permanently drops. This drop is due to the disappearance of women's relative sharing advantages. Moreover, contrary to men, women's urban wage premium is now driven by a wage penalty incurred when changing occupation while transitioning from urban to rural jobs.

From the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, coastal areas of Italy (especially, in the south-west) were subject to attacks by pirates launched from the shores of Northern Africa. This paper studies the long-run impact of these events. We show that in areas that were more exposed to raids, easier-to-defend but less productive locations ended up in being relatively more populated. The consequences of pirates’ attacks were still visible in the first part of the twentieth century and ceased to be statistically significant after the 1960s.

During a time of rising concern about climate change, the urban public transit sector has not significantly reduced its carbon footprint. Using data from the nation's transit agencies over the years 2002–2019, we document that the energy efficiency gains of US public transit lagged the gains of European public transit and the US private transportation. The carbon footprint of a transportation provider depends on scale, composition, and technique effects. We use this accounting framework to explore several possible explanations for our findings. We contrast the incentive effects that a private entity versus a public transit agency faces in decarbonizing.

Historically coal has offered both benefits and costs to urban areas. Benefits include coal’s role in fueling industry and thus employment. The primary costs are air pollution and its impact on human health. This paper starts by using a Rosen–Roback style model to examine how differences in local coal availability affect equilibrium city employment. Drawing on the model, the paper surveys papers that examine the net effects of coal on the growth in city population and air pollution on health. The paper then turns to papers that explicitly consider the trade-offs between production benefits and pollution disamenities across space and over time. The paper ends with a discussion of opportunities for future work on coal and cities in historical settings.

This paper examines the challenges and opportunities in decarbonizing the passenger road transportation sector by reviewing recent empirical evidence and drawing lessons for developing countries. It first identifies the advantages and disadvantages of various policy instruments to promote modal shifts and vehicle fuel efficiency, and then discusses the potential impacts of electrification and ride-hailing in transportation decarbonization. While developing countries face formidable challenges in reducing carbon emissions from passenger transportation due to income and population growth, the paper argues that a unique window of opportunity exists to foster a culture of sustainable travel behavior by expanding public transit in combination with market-based pricing policies.