Working Papers
Urban-Biased Growth: A Macroeconomic Analysis (with Fabian Eckert and Sharat Ganapati) [Updated!]
After 1980, larger US cities experienced substantially faster wage growth than smaller ones. We show that this urban bias mainly reflected wage growth at large Business Services firms. These firms set themselves apart through high per-worker spending on information technology capital and their disproportionate presence in big cities. We introduce a spatial model of investment-specific technical change that can rationalize these patterns. Using the model as an accounting framework, the observed decline in the investment price of information technology capital explains most urban-biased growth by raising the profits of large Business Services firms.
Local Growth Policy and Dynamic Misallocation [New Version Coming Soon]
Many state and local governments incentivize new business creation. I analyze local growth policy in a setting where firm entry and expansion choices exhibit local complementarities, creating dynamic misallocation at the aggregate level. Optimal entry subsidies would speed the transition of Rustbelt workers to the South and Mountain West by an extra 10 million people by 2035, raising real incomes by 4%. Actual subsidies substantially worsen misallocation, lowering welfare by 3%, 6 times the size of the subsidies themselves.
Under Revision
Clean Growth (with Costas Arkolakis)
Journal of Political Economy, Revise and Resubmit
Supplementary Material, Replication Package
The Startup Multiplier
Review of Economic Studies, Revise and Resubmit
Are Inflationary Shocks Regressive? A Feasible Set Approach (with John Grigsby, Felipe Del Canto and Eric Qian) NBER Working Paper Version
Quarterly Journal of Economics, Reject and Resubmit
Population Growth and Firm-Product Dynamics (with Michael Peters)
Journal of Political Economy: Macroeconomics, Revise and Resubmit
Publications
Demand, Growth, and Deleveraging (with Brian Greaney)
Review of Economic Dynamics, Volume 51, December 2023
The Returns to Big City Experience: Evidence From Refugees in Denmark
(with Fabian Eckert and Mads Hejlesen)
Journal of Urban Economics, Volume 120, July 2022, 103454
The Geography of Remote Work
(with Lukas Althoff , Fabian Eckert and Sharat Ganapati)
Regional Science and Urban Economics, Volume 93, March 2022, 103770
Press Coverage: NYT, The Economist, Bloomberg, NYT: The Upshot, Marketplace Podcast, Governing Magazine