TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glaeser,Edward L.
AU  - Gottlieb,Joshua D.
TI  - The Wealth of Cities: Agglomeration Economies and Spatial Equilibrium in the United States
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14806
PY  - 2009
Y2  - March 2009
DO  - 10.3386/w14806
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14806
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14806.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward L. Glaeser
Department of Economics
315A Littauer Center
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-0575
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: eglaeser@harvard.edu

Joshua D. Gottlieb
Vancouver School of Economics
University of British Columbia
6000 Iona Drive
Vancouver, BC V6T 1L4
CANADA
Tel: 604/822-4121
E-Mail: joshua.gottlieb@ubc.ca
AB  - Empirical research on cities starts with a spatial equilibrium condition: workers and firms are assumed to be indifferent across space.   This condition implies that research on cities is different from research on countries, and that work on places within countries needs to consider population, income and housing prices simultaneously.  Housing supply elasticity will determine whether urban success shows up in more people or higher incomes.  Urban economists generally accept the existence of agglomeration economies, which exist when productivity rises with density, but estimating the magnitude of those economies is difficult.  Some manufacturing firms cluster to reduce the costs of moving goods, but this force no longer appears to be important in driving urban success.  Instead, modern cities are far more dependent on the role that density can play in speeding the flow of ideas.  Finally, urban economics has some insights to offer related topics such as growth theory, national income accounts, public economics and housing prices.
ER  -