TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glaeser,Edward L.
AU  - Kahn,Matthew E.
TI  - Decentralized Employment and the Transformation of the American City
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8117
PY  - 2001
Y2  - February 2001
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8117
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8117.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

Matthew E. Kahn
UCLA Institute of the Environment
Department of Economics
Department of Public Policy
Anderson School of Management
UCLA Law School, Box 951496
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1496
Tel: 310/794-4904
Fax: 310/825-9663
E-Mail: mkahn@ioe.ucla.edu
AB  - This paper examines the decentralization of employment using zip code data on employment by industry.  Most American cities are decentralized on average less than 16 percent of employment in metropolitan areas is within a three mile radius of the city center.  In decentralized cities, the classic stylized facts of urban economics (i.e. prices fall with distance to the city center, commute times rise with distance and poverty falls with distance) no longer hold.  Decentralization is most common in manufacturing and least common in services.  The human capital level of an industry predicts its centralization, but the dominant factor explaining decentralization is the residential preferences of workers.  Political borders also impact employment density which suggests that local government policies significantly influence the location of industry.
ER  -