Regional Science and Urban Economics最新文献

The existence of amenities matters to understanding people’s residential choices. Our theoretical model extends the standard urban model by introducing exogenous amenities to explain population allocation within cities. To estimate the model predictions, we focus on historic amenities using detailed geolocated data for 579 European cities. We analyze how the shape of city centers endowed or not endowed with these amenities is affected. We measure historic amenities with the location of buildings from the Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance–Baroque periods. Our results show that cities with historic buildings in their centers have steeper population density gradients, are more compact and centralized, and have been less affected by the suburbanization processes caused by transportation improvements. Heterogeneity analyses show that the quantity and the quality of historic buildings also matter. Several robustness checks controlling for natural and modern amenities and testing for the spatial scope of these amenities verify our main results.

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.

We analyze whether the benefits of work experience that was acquired in denser locations can be explained by the quality of jobs that can be found in agglomerations using administrative data on individual employment biographies of workers in Germany. We find that 79% of the premium for work experience gained in the densest regions can be ascribed to the sectors, tasks and establishments in which experience was acquired. Moreover, we find that foreign and native workers, on average, benefit to a similar extent from dynamic agglomeration effects. However, low-skilled foreign workers receive a lower return to experience gained in dense regions than observationally identical natives. This difference can be explained by the fact that the former gain work experience in lower-quality jobs.

This paper investigates the extent of property tax capitalization in the context of a progressive property tax pilot in Shanghai. I utilize a difference-in-differences approach by comparing neighborhoods with different tax rates before and after the implementation of the property taxes. Neighborhoods with a 0.2 percentage point higher marginal property tax rate experience a roughly 2.73% decrease in housing prices relative to their counterparts. The result reflects that at least 71% of expected property tax liabilities are capitalized into housing prices in a year. These changes also imply a large wealth redistribution as large as 2.68 years of average disposable income across homeowners.

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.