IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_8768.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Prime Locations

Author

Listed:
  • Gabriel Ahlfeldt
  • Thilo N. H. Albers
  • Kristian Behrens

Abstract

We harness big data to detect prime locations—large clusters of knowledge-based tradable services—in 125 global cities and track changes in the within-city geography of prime service jobs over a century. Historically smaller cities that did not develop early public transit networks are less concentrated today and have prime locations farther away from their historic cores. We rationalize these findings in an agent-based model that features extreme agglomeration, multiple equilibria, and path dependence. Both city size and public transit networks anchor city structure. Exploiting major disasters and using a novel instrument—subway potential—we provide causal evidence for these mechanisms and disentangle size- from transport network effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabriel Ahlfeldt & Thilo N. H. Albers & Kristian Behrens, 2020. "Prime Locations," CESifo Working Paper Series 8768, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8768
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp8768.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Gobillon, Laurent, 2015. "The Empirics of Agglomeration Economies," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 247-348, Elsevier.
    2. Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt & Daniel P. McMillen, 2018. "Tall Buildings and Land Values: Height and Construction Cost Elasticities in Chicago, 1870–2010," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(5), pages 861-875, December.
    3. Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), 2015. "Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 5, number 5.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M. & Barr, Jason, 2022. "The economics of skyscrapers: A synthesis," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liu, Crocker H. & Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Strange, William C., 2020. "Employment density and agglomeration economies in tall buildings," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    2. Jedwab, Remi & Loungani, Prakash & Yezer, Anthony, 2021. "Comparing cities in developed and developing countries: Population, land area, building height and crowding," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    3. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2020. "The Economics of Urban Density," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(3), pages 3-26, Summer.
    4. Bin, Peng & Chen, Xiaolan & Fracasso, Andrea & Tomasi, Chiara, 2018. "Resource allocation and productivity across provinces in China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 103-113.
    5. Eloy Solis & Kayvan Karimi & Irene Garcia & Inmaculada Mohino, 2022. "Knowledge Economy Clustering at the Intrametropolitan Level: Evidence from Madrid," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 13(2), pages 1268-1299, June.
    6. Mark Huggett & Wenlan Luo, 2023. "Optimal Income Taxation: An Urban Economics Perspective," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 847-866, December.
    7. Pierre-Philippe Combes & Gilles Duranton & Laurent Gobillon, 2012. "The Cost of Agglomeration: Land Prices in Cities," Working Papers hal-03461075, HAL.
    8. Sandy Fréret & Denis Maguain, 2017. "The effects of agglomeration on tax competition: evidence from a two-regime spatial panel model on French data," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(6), pages 1100-1140, December.
    9. Matthias Wrede, 2022. "Voting on urban land development," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(2), pages 335-359, March.
    10. Stephan Heblich & Stephen J Redding & Daniel M Sturm, 2020. "The Making of the Modern Metropolis: Evidence from London," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(4), pages 2059-2133.
    11. Carl Gaigné & Jacques-François Thisse, 2013. "New Economic Geography and the City," Working Papers SMART 13-02, INRAE UMR SMART.
    12. Sebastian Langer, 2019. "Expenditure interactions between municipalities and the role of agglomeration forces: a spatial analysis for North Rhine-Westphalia," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 62(3), pages 497-527, June.
    13. de Haas, Ralph & Poelhekke, Steven, 2016. "Mining Matters : Natural Resource Extraction and Local Business Constraints," Discussion Paper 2016-034, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    14. Dingel, Jonathan I. & Miscio, Antonio & Davis, Donald R., 2021. "Cities, lights, and skills in developing economies," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    15. Fabien Candau & Elisa Dienesch, 2015. "Spatial distribution of skills and regional trade integration," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 54(2), pages 451-488, March.
    16. Venables, Anthony & Duranton, Gilles, 2018. "Place-Based Policies for Development," CEPR Discussion Papers 12889, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Albouy, David & Behrens, Kristian & Robert-Nicoud, Frédéric & Seegert, Nathan, 2019. "The optimal distribution of population across cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 102-113.
    18. Julio Martinez-Galarraga & Elisenda Paluzie & Jordi Pons & Javier Silvestre & Daniel A. Tirado, 2021. "New economic geography and economic history: a survey of recent contributions through the lens of the Spanish industrialization process," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 15(3), pages 719-751, September.
    19. Anthony J. Venables & Gilles Duranton, 2019. "Place-Based Policies: principles and developing country applications," Economics Series Working Papers 893, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    20. Ariel Burstein & Gordon Hanson & Lin Tian & Jonathan Vogel, 2020. "Tradability and the Labor‐Market Impact of Immigration: Theory and Evidence From the United States," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(3), pages 1071-1112, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    prime services; internal city structure; agent-based model; multiple equilibria and path dependence; transport networks;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R38 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Government Policy
    • R52 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Land Use and Other Regulations
    • R58 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Regional Development Planning and Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8768. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.