Densely Speaking

The Impact of WFH on Brick-and-Mortar Retail (Lindsay Relihan) Lindsay Relihan is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business at Purdue University. She is the author of The Impact of Work-from-Home on Brick-and-Mortar Retail Establishments: Evidence from Card Transactions, with James Duguid, Bryan Kim, and Chris Wheat. Appendices: Lindsay Relihan: Cities and Covid, Thus Far by Gilles Duranton and Jessie Handbury, Silo Series, and The Mars Trilogy. Greg Shill: Remote Work Sticks for All Kinds of Jobs, Wall Street Journal. Jeff Lin: Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar. Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill, @RelihanLindsay Producer: Courtney Campbell 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.

The Work-from-Home Technology Boon and Its Consequences (Andra Ghent) Andra Ghent is Professor of Finance at the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business. She is the author of The Work-from-Home Technology Boon and Its Consequences, with Morris A. Davis and Jesse Gregory. Appendices: Andra Ghent: the miniseries Show Me a Hero and the book Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by Nolan Gray. Also mentioned: Natalia Emanuel & Emma Harrington, Working Remotely? Selection, Treatment, and the Market for Remote Work and Emanuel, Harrington & Amanda Pallais, The Power of Proximity to Coworkers: Training for Tomorrow or Productivity Today? Greg Shill: The Puzzle and Persistence of Biglaw Clustering (summarized in this blog post) Jeff Lin: Growth in Cities, revisited Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill. On Threads: Jeff is @jeffrlin and Greg is @just_shilling. Producer: Courtney Campbell 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.

Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse (Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh) Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh is the Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor of Real Estate and Professor of Finance at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.  He is the author of Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse (joint with Arpit Gupta and Vrinda Mittal).   Appendices: Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh: The City in Transition: Prospects and Policies for New York by the Temporary Commission on City Finances, City of New York (1977).   Greg Shill: Internet Appendix to today’s paper: Asset Pricing Model to Infer Expected Returns and Assortative Matching at the Top of the Distribution: Evidence from the World’s Most Exclusive Marriage Market by Marc Goñi.   Jeff Lin: Looking Back to Look Forward: Learning from Philadelphia’s 350 Years of Urban Development by Joseph Gyourko, Robert Margo and Andrew Haughwout. Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill, @SVNieuwerburgh.   Producer: Courtney Campbell.   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.

Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part III This episode is the third and final in a series based on a new special issue on Urban Economics and History in Regional Science and Urban Economics. It contains a series of short conversations with authors and concludes Season 2 of the show. Today’s Guests: Ed Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Department of Economics at Harvard University. Leah Brooks is an Associate Professor at George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. Ting Chen is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Hong Kong Baptist University. David Nagy is a Junior Researcher at Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI), an Adjunct Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), and a Barcelona School of Economics Affiliated Professor. Yanos Zylberberg is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol. Jason Barr is a Professor of Economics at Rutgers University-Newark. Papers Discussed in Today’s Episode: What Can Developing Cities Today Learn from the Urban Past? by Ed Glaeser What if You Build It and They Don’t Come? How the Ghost of Transit Past Haunts the Transit Present by Leah Brooks and Genevieve Denoeux War Shocks, Migration, and Historical Spatial Development in China by Ting Chen and James Kung Quantitative Economic Geography Meets History: Questions, Answers and Challenges by David Nagy Urban Economics in a Historical Perspective: Recovering Data with Machine Learning by Pierre-Philippe Combes, Laurent Gobillon, and Yanos Zylberberg Viewing Urban Spatial History from Tall Buildings by Gabriel Ahlfedlt and Jason Barr Firms, Fires, and Firebreaks: The Impact of the 1906 San Francisco Disaster on Business Agglomeration by James Siodla Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill. Hosts: Jeff Lin and Greg Shill. Special thanks to our outgoing producer Schuyler Pals (Schuyler, you'll be greatly missed - thank you and good luck on the bar exam!) Our theme music is by Oleksandr Koltsov. Sounds from Ambience, London Street by InspectorJ. 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.

Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part II This episode is the second in a series based on a forthcoming special issue on Urban Economics and History, to be published in the journal Regional Science and Urban Economics. It contains a series of short conversations with multiple authors. Guests: Brian Beach is Assistant Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University and Dan Bogart is Professor of Economics at the University of California Irvine. Robert Margo is Professor of Economics at Boston University. Alexander Whalley is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Calgary Haskayne School of Business. Katherine Eriksson is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California Davis and Allison Shertzer is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh. Papers Discussed in Today’s Episode: Water Infrastructure and Health in U.S. Cities by Brian Beach. Infrastructure and Institutions: Lessons from History by Dan Bogart. Industrialization and Urbanization in Nineteenth Century America by Jeremy Atack, Robert Margo, and Paul Rhode. 150 Years of the Geography of Innovation by Michael Andrews and Alexander Whalley. Immigrants and Cities during the Age of Mass Migration by Katherine Eriksson and Zachary Ward. Zoning and Segregation in Urban Economic History by Allison Shertzer, Tate Twinam, and Randy Walsh. Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill. Hosts: Jeff Lin and Greg Shill. Producer: Schuyler Pals. Our theme music is by Oleksandr Koltsov. Sounds from Ambience, London Street by InspectorJ. 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.

Special Series on History and Urban Economics - Part I This episode is the first in a series based on a forthcoming special issue focused on Urban Economics and History, to be published in the journal Regional Science and Urban Economics. It contains a series of short conversations with multiple authors. Guests: Walker Hanlon is Associate Professor of Economics at Northwestern University and Stephan Heblich is Associate Professor and Munk Chair of Economics at the University of Toronto. Maarten Bosker is Professor of International Trade and Development at Erasmas University of Rotterdam. Noel Johnson is Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Treb Allen is Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College Papers Discussed in this Episode: History and Urban Economics by Walker Hanlon and Stephan Heblich City Origins by Maarten Bosker Medieval Cities Through the Lens of Urban Economics by Remie Jedwab, Noel Johnson, and Mark Koyoma Persistance and Path Dependence: A Primer by Treb Allen and Dave Donaldson What Future for History Dependence in Spatial Economics by Jeffrey Lin and Ferdinand Rauch Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill. Hosts: Jeff Lin and Greg Shill. Producer: Schuyler Pals. Special theme music for this series: Oleksandr Koltsov Ambience, London Street, A by InspectorJ. 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.

Evan Mast, Does Building New Apartments in Low-Income Areas Cause Displacement? Evan Mast, Assistant Professor of Economics at Notre Dame, is our guest. The focus of the conversation is Evan's paper Local Effects of Large New Apartment Buildings in Low Income Areas (with Brian J. Asquith and Davin Reed). Kate Pennington, Economist at the U.S. Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies, is our guest co-host. Check out Kate's working paper Does New Housing Cause Displacement?: The Supply and Demand Effects of Construction in San Francisco, which uses a different identfication strategy but reaches similar results. Appendices: Evan Mast: Proud Old, Stubborn Old Wicker Park by Robert Cross Kate Pennington: The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle Jeff Lin: Razing San Francisco: The 1906 Disaster as a Natural Experiment in Urban Redevelopment by James Siodla Greg Shill: State and Local Government Blog posts Teaching Cities in “The City” by Clay Gillette and How Uncordinated Land Use and Transportation Laws Thwart Climate Response by Sara Bronin Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill, @evanmast2, and @katempenn. 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.

Constitutional Law for NIMBYs? The guests discuss the National League of Cities' Principles of Home Rule for the 21st Century, which two of them (Nestor Davidson and Richard Schragger) helped draft and the third (David Schleicher) has criticized as "Constitutional Law for NIMBYs." Nestor Davison is the Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use, and Property Law and the Faculty Director of the Urban Law Center at Fordham Law School. Richard Schragger is the Bowen Professor of Law and Karsh Bicentennial Professor of Law at UVA Law School. David Schleicher is Professor of Law at Yale Law School and host of the Digging a Hole podcast. In addition to the National League of Cities' Principles of Home Rule for the 21st Century, the papers at the heart of the conversation are Do Local Governments Really Have Too Much Power? (by Nestor and Richard) and Constitutional Law for NIMBYs (by David). Appendices: Nestor Davison: City-Wide Effects of New Housing Supply: Evidence From Moving Chains by Cristina Bratu, Oskari Harjunen, and Tuukka Saarimaa Supply Shock Versus Demand Shock: The Local Effects of New Housing in Low-Income Areas by Brian Asquith, Evan Mast, and Davin Reed Richard Schragger: The Last Black Man in San Francisco (movie) David Schleicher: Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation by Edward Glaeser and David Cutler State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States and the Nation by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez Greg Shill: Sky-High Vaccination Rates and Zero Taxes Make Dubai a Pandemic Boom Town (in The Wall Street Journal) Jeff Lin: I Changed My Mind About Rent Control by Jerusalem Demsas From Samurai to Skyscrapers: How Historical Lot Fragmentation Shapes Tokyo by Junichi Yamasaki, Kentaro Nakajima, and Kensuke Teshima Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, @greg_shill, @davidson_nestor, @RichSchragger, and @ProfSchleich, and check out David's hit podcast (with Samuel Moyn) Digging a Hole: The Legal Theory Podcast. 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.

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: The Internal Spatial Organization of Firms: Evidence from Denmark by Camilo Acosta and Ditte Håkonsson Lygnemark in the Journal of Urban Economics. Location as an Asset by Adrien Bilal and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg in Econometrica. The Production Function for Housing: Evidence from France by Pierre-Philippe Combes, Gilles Duranton, and Laurent Gobillon in the Journal of Political Economy. Are Poor Cities Cheap for Everyone? Non-Homotheticity and the Cost of Living Across U.S. Cities by Jessie Handbury in Econometrica. East-Side Story: Historical Pollution and Persistent Neighborhood Sorting by Stephan Heblich, Alex Trew, and Yanos Zylberberg in the Journal of Political Economy. 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. 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. The Effect of High-Tech Clusters on the Productivity of Top Inventors by Enrico Moretti in the American Economic Review. Commuting and Innovation: Are Closer Inventors More Productive? by Hongyu Xiao, Andy Wu, and Jaeho Kim in the Journal of Urban Economics. 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.

Peter Norton, The Past and Future of Driving in High-Tech Cities Peter Norton is an associate professor of history in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia. He is the author of the new book Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving as well as Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City and Persistent Pedestrianism: Urban Walking in Motor Age America, 1920s-1960s. Appendices: Peter Norton: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Greg Shill: How Reporters Can Evaluate Automated Driving Announcements by Bryant Walker Smith; Rewriting Our Nation’s Deadly Traffic Manual by Gregory H. Shill and Sara C. Bronin; Did Highways Cause Suburbanization? by Nathaniel Baum-Snow; and Freeway Revolts!: The Quality of Life Effects of Highways by Jeffrey Lin and Jeffrey Brinkman. Jeff Lin: Changing Lanes: Visions and Histories of Urban Freeways by Joseph F.C. DiMento and Cliff Ellis. Follow us on the web or on Twitter: @denselyspeaking, @jeffrlin, and @greg_shill. 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.