Diego Puga's Favorite Urban Economics Papers of 2021

Diego Puga is Professor of Economics at CEMFI in Madrid, Spain. In recent years, he has made a tradition of sharing his favorite urban economics papers of the year (specifically, urban econ articles published in the calendar year). In this interview, we chat about his favorites from 2021. They appear below as well as in this thread. He did similar threads for 2020, 2019, and 2018.

Diego’s Ten Favorite Urban Econ Articles Published in 2021:

1. The Internal Spatial Organization of Firms: Evidence from Denmark by Camilo Acosta and Ditte Håkonsson Lygnemark in the Journal of Urban Economics.


2. Location as an Asset by Adrien Bilal and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg in Econometrica.


3. The Production Function for Housing: Evidence from France by Pierre-Philippe Combes, Gilles Duranton, and Laurent Gobillon in the Journal of Political Economy.


4. Are Poor Cities Cheap for Everyone? Non-Homotheticity and the Cost of Living Across U.S. Cities by Jessie Handbury in Econometrica.


5. East-Side Story: Historical Pollution and Persistent Neighborhood Sorting by Stephan Heblich, Alex Trew, and Yanos Zylberberg in the Journal of Political Economy.


6. Building the City: From Slums to a Modern Metroplis by J. Vernon Henderson, Tanner Regan, and Anthony J. Venables in the Review of Economic Studies.


7. Planning Ahead for Better Neighborhoods: Long-Run Evidence from Tanzania by Guy Michaels, Dzhamilya Nigmatulina, Ferdinand Rauch, Tanner Regan, Neeraj Baruah, and Amanda Dahlstrand in the Journal of Political Economy.


8. The Effect of High-Tech Clusters on the Productivity of Top Inventors by Enrico Moretti in the American Economic Review.


9. Commuting and Innovation: Are Closer Inventors More Productive? by Hongyu Xiao, Andy Wu, and Jaeho Kim in the Journal of Urban Economics.


10. The Economics of Speed: The Electrification of the Streetcar System and the Decline of Mom-and-Pop Stores in Boston, 1885-1905 by Wei You in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

Appendices:

Diego Puga: Provides examples of areas where urban economists could benefit from more interaction with urban planners to get better information about whether new initiatives are actually doing what we claim they do, including superblocks in Barcelona and the 15 Minute City in Paris. Eg: Super Blocks in Barcelona; The 15 Minute City.

Greg Shill: Musings on the Boston streetcar paper (Economics of Speed), Location as an Asset, and the interaction between real estate prices and firm experimentation, noting the role of Kaldi’s, a local coffee roaster/distributor, in raising the floor for the quality of coffee at locations in St. Louis (where Greg is visiting at Washington University School of Law this semester). Eg: an interview with the founder.

Jeff Lin: On (Not) Reading Papers by Jan Hendrik Kirchner and Reading Books Versus Engaging With Them by Holden Karnofsky.

Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill, and @ProfDiegoPuga

Producer: Schuyler Pals.

The views expressed on the show are those of the participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Federal Reserve System, or any of the other institutions with which the hosts or guests are affiliated.