economic geography essay topics

Top 50 Geography Research Topics [Revised]

Geography isn’t just about maps and memorizing capital cities; it’s a dynamic field that delves into everything from understanding our planet’s physical features to unraveling the complexities of human societies. In this blog, we’ll embark on a journey through fascinating geography research topics, ranging from climate change and urbanization to cultural dynamics and emerging trends. Whether you’re a curious student or simply someone intrigued by the world around you, join us as we explore the diverse realms of geography research.

What Are The Three Main Topics Of Geography?

Table of Contents

• Physical Geography
• Study of Earth’s physical features, processes, and phenomena.
• Example: Investigating the formation of mountains, erosion patterns in river systems, or the impact of climate change on ecosystems.
• Human Geography
• Examination of the interactions between human societies and their environments.
• Example: Analyzing urbanization trends, migration patterns, cultural landscapes, or economic activities within specific regions.
• Environmental Geography
• Focus on the relationship between humans and their natural surroundings, including the impact of human activities on the environment.
• Example: Researching pollution levels in urban areas, deforestation rates in tropical rainforests, or the conservation of endangered species and habitats.

50 Geography Research Topics: Category Wise

Physical geography research topics.

• Impact of climate change on polar ice caps.
• Patterns of desertification in arid regions.
• Formation and evolution of volcanic islands.
• Study of river meandering and channel migration.
• Factors influencing the distribution of biomes worldwide.

Human Geography Research Topics

• Urbanization dynamics in developing countries.
• Social and economic impacts of gentrification in urban neighborhoods.
• Migration patterns and trends in Europe.
• Cultural landscapes and identity politics in contested territories.
• Gender disparities in access to resources and opportunities in rural areas.

Environmental Geography Research Topics

• Analysis of air quality in megacities.
• Impacts of deforestation on local biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest.
• Water scarcity and management strategies in arid regions.
• Ecotourism and its role in sustainable development.
• Effects of marine pollution on coral reef ecosystems.

Geographical Techniques and Tools Research Topics

• Applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in disaster management.
• Remote sensing techniques for monitoring agricultural productivity.
• Cartographic visualization of population density and distribution.
• Spatial analysis of crime patterns in urban areas.
• Geographical modeling of disease spread and containment strategies.

Regional Geography Research Topics

• Socioeconomic disparities between urban and rural regions in India.
• Geopolitical tensions in the South China Sea.
• Cultural diversity and integration in multicultural cities like London or New York.
• Environmental challenges facing the African Sahel region.
• Regional impacts of globalization on indigenous communities in South America.

Cultural Geography Research Topics

• Influence of religion on cultural landscapes in the Middle East.
• Cultural diffusion and globalization in the digital age.
• Preservation of intangible cultural heritage in UNESCO World Heritage sites.
• Impact of colonialism on indigenous cultures in Australia.
• Gender roles and cultural practices in traditional societies.

Economic Geography Research Topics

• Spatial distribution of industries in emerging economies.
• Trade patterns and economic integration in the European Union.
• Impact of globalization on labor markets in Southeast Asia.
• Role of transportation infrastructure in regional economic development.
• Economic consequences of natural disasters on local communities.

Political Geography Research Topics

• Border disputes and territorial conflicts in the Middle East.
• Secessionist movements and autonomy struggles in Europe.
• Role of international organizations in conflict resolution and peacebuilding.
• Geopolitical implications of Arctic resource extraction.
• Influence of soft power and cultural diplomacy in international relations.

Social Geography Research Topics

• Spatial patterns of poverty and social exclusion in urban areas.
• Dynamics of neighborhood segregation and integration in diverse cities.
• Impact of social media on community engagement and activism.
• Gender-based violence and spatial justice in urban environments.
• Cultural dimensions of health disparities in rural communities.

Historical Geography Research Topics

• Legacy of colonialism in shaping urban landscapes in former colonies.
• Evolution of trade routes and their impact on cultural diffusion.
• Archaeological landscape studies of ancient civilizations.
• Historical geography of migration and diaspora communities.
• Environmental history of industrialization and its long-term impacts on ecosystems.

How To Write A Geography Research Paper?

Writing a geography research paper involves several key steps to ensure a well-structured, coherent, and informative document. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to write a geography research paper:

• Choose a Topic: Select a specific and focused research topic within the field of geography that interests you. Consider the scope of your paper, available resources, and the significance of the topic in the field.
• Conduct Research: Gather relevant sources of information such as scholarly articles, books, journals, government publications, and online databases. Use both primary and secondary sources to support your research and develop a comprehensive understanding of the topic.
• Develop a clear and short thesis statement that explains what your research paper is about. This statement should show the main idea or point you’re going to talk about in your paper.
• Organize your paper by making a plan or outline. Split it into different parts like the introduction, where you start talking about your topic and explain why it’s important. Then, include a literature review where you talk about what others have already studied about your topic. If you did any special methods in your research, talk about them in the methodology section. Then, show your findings or results, discuss them, and finally, conclude your paper. Make sure you outline all the important things you want to talk about in each section.
• Start your paper with an interesting introduction. Tell the reader some background information about your topic and why it’s important. Also, introduce your thesis statement here. Explain what you’ll be talking about in your research paper to help guide the reader through your paper.
• Conduct a Literature Review: Review existing literature and research related to your topic to contextualize your study and identify gaps or areas for further investigation. Summarize key findings, methodologies, and theories from previous studies to support your own research.
• Describe Your Methodology (If Applicable): If your research involves empirical data collection or analysis, describe the methodology and research design used in your study. Explain the research methods, data sources, sampling techniques, and analytical tools employed to gather and analyze data.
• Present Your Findings: Present the results of your research in a clear and systematic manner. Use tables, graphs, maps, and other visual aids to illustrate your findings and enhance comprehension. Provide descriptive and analytical interpretations of the data to support your arguments.
• Discuss Your Results: Analyze and interpret the significance of your research findings in relation to your thesis statement and research objectives. Discuss any patterns, trends, or relationships observed in the data and explore their implications for the broader field of geography.
• Draw Conclusions: Summarize the main findings of your research and reiterate the significance of your study. Discuss any limitations or constraints encountered during the research process and propose areas for future research or further investigation.
• Cite Your Sources: Ensure that you properly cite all sources of information used in your research paper according to the citation style specified by your instructor or academic institution. Use in-text citations and include a comprehensive bibliography or reference list at the end of your paper.
• Proofread and Revise: Review your research paper carefully for grammatical errors, typos, and inconsistencies. Revise and refine your writing to improve clarity, coherence, and overall quality. Consider seeking feedback from peers, mentors, or academic advisors to further enhance your paper.

Emerging Topics in Geography Research

As our world continues to evolve, new frontiers of geography research are constantly emerging. From the quest for sustainable development to the rise of smart cities and the challenges of climate resilience, researchers are grappling with complex issues that defy easy solutions.

One promising avenue of research is the integration of indigenous knowledge and perspectives into geographic studies. By recognizing the wisdom of traditional cultures and their deep connection to the land, researchers can develop more holistic approaches to environmental management and conservation.

In conclusion, geography research offers a rich tapestry of topics that span the natural and social sciences. Whether it’s unraveling the mysteries of climate change, exploring the dynamics of urbanization, or celebrating the diversity of cultural landscapes, there’s something for everyone in the world of geography research.

So, whether you’re a student embarking on geography research topics or simply a curious explorer seeking to understand the world around you, take heart in knowing that the adventure has only just begun. Happy exploring!

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How to Write Geography Essay: Topics and Examples

Table of contents

• 1 What Is Geography Essay
• 2 Choosing a Topic
• 3 Research and Data Collection
• 4 Planning the Essay
• 5 Writing the Essay
• 6 Examples of Geography Essays
• 7 Unlocking the World: Key Insights from Our Geographic Exploration

Welcome to the dynamic world of geography essays, where understanding the Earth’s surface becomes an enlightening journey. This article serves as a comprehensive guide to writing a geography essay, starting with the crucial step of selecting a captivating topic. We’ll navigate through various popular topics, emphasizing the importance of effective research and data collection.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• How to select engaging and relevant geography essay topics.
• The importance of thorough research and effective data collection methods.
• Strategies for planning and organizing your geography essay for clarity and impact.
• Tips for writing a compelling geography essay, including structuring and presenting arguments.
• Analyzing examples of successful geography essays to guide and inspire your work.

As we transition into the details, prepare to enhance your understanding and skills in geography essay writing.

What Is Geography Essay

As we delve into the essence of a geography essay, it’s important to understand that it meticulously examines Earth’s landscapes and human activities. Furthermore, it aims to analyze how these two aspects interact, focusing on spatial relationships and patterns. Transitioning into the specifics, such essays often delve into particular geographic issues, aiming to broaden our comprehension of the world.

Moreover, when writing a geography essay, one must include accurate geographical data. This data, encompassing maps, statistics, and case studies, is crucial for a well-grounded analysis. Consequently, the essay should present facts and interpret them, offering fresh insights into the discussed topic.

Additionally, it’s noteworthy that an essay on geography stands out from others due to its unique subject matter approach. It demands a keen eye for detail and a profound understanding of the world’s physical and human dimensions. This requirement makes crafting such an essay a challenging yet fulfilling endeavor.

Lastly, the primary goal of a geography essay is to enlighten and inform. It persuades readers to view the world through a geographical lens, grasping the complex interplay between humans and their environment. This type of essay transcends mere academic exercise, serving as a means to foster a deeper appreciation for our world and its complex dynamics.

Choosing a Topic

The crucial point for a successful geography essay is selecting an engaging and appropriate topic. To choose a topic that resonates, consider current events, your interests, and the scope of your assignment. A good topic should captivate your interest and offer sufficient scope for in-depth study and analysis.

Popular geography essay topics often revolve around climate change , urban development, and cultural landscapes. These topics provide a rich ground for exploration and allow for diverse perspectives and interpretations. For example, a thematic essay on geography could focus on how urbanization affects local ecosystems or how cultural practices shape landscape use.

• Analyzing the Direct Impact of Climate Change on the Amazon Rainforest’s Biodiversity
• Urbanization in Mega Cities: Environmental Consequences and Sustainable Solutions
• Wind and Solar Power: Pioneers of Sustainable Energy Landscape
• Managing Water Scarcity in the Middle East: Strategies and Challenges
• The Amazon Deforestation Crisis: Causes, Impacts, and Global Responses
• Spatial Inequality: A Detailed Look at Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
• The Dynamics of Population Growth and Overconsumption in Asia
• Cultural Preservation of Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon Basin
• Earthquakes in Japan: Analyzing Causes, Effects, and Preparedness Strategies
• Geography’s Role in the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
• Implementing Sustainable Agricultural Practices in India for Food Security
• The Kashmir Conflict: A Geopolitical Analysis of Border Disputes
• The Growing Crisis of Climate Refugees in the Pacific Islands
• The Importance of Urban Green Spaces in New York City’s Environmental Health
• The Impact of Globalization on Maori Culture in New Zealand
• Ecotourism in Costa Rica: Balancing Economic Benefits and Environmental Preservation
• Addressing Ocean Plastic Pollution: Case Studies from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
• The Nile River Conflict: Water Politics in a Changing Climate
• Preventing Desertification in the Sahel: Strategies and International Cooperation
• GIS in Disaster Management: Case Studies of Earthquake Response and Recovery
• Measuring the Effects of Glacial Melting on Greenland’s Coastal Communities
• Tracing the Economic Geography of the Silk Road in the 21st Century
• The Health Impacts of Air Pollution in Beijing: Urban Policies and Challenges
• Vulnerable Communities: Assessing the Socioeconomic Impacts of Climate Change in Bangladesh
• The New Face of Migration: Syrian Refugees and European Response
• The Critical Role of Metropolitan Areas in Combating Global Warming
• Saving Madagascar’s Rainforest: Conservation Strategies and Challenges
• The Transition to Renewable Energy in Germany: A Model for the World?
• Satellite Imagery in Land Use Changes: A Study of the Brazilian Amazon
• Arctic Sovereignty: The Geopolitical Implications of Melting Ice Caps for Global Powers

To guide and inspire your topic selection, you can use geography essay examples. These examples showcase a range of topics and approaches, helping you understand what makes a topic both engaging and feasible for study. Remember, a well-chosen topic is the first step toward a compelling and insightful geography essay.

Research and Data Collection

To talk about thorough research, it is the backbone of any geography study, providing the factual and theoretical foundation to understand complex geographical phenomena. To explain why the study of geography is important, one must delve into diverse and reliable sources that offer insights into how geographical factors shape our world and affect our lives. This research underpins the type of geography being studied, whether physical, human, or environmental.

Collecting geographical data can be done through various methods. Firstly, fieldwork is essential, especially for physical geography, as it allows for the direct observation and measurement of geographical features and processes. For human geography, surveys and interviews can yield valuable data on human behaviors and social patterns. Moreover, a thorough literature review also helps understand existing research and theories, providing a critical context for new findings.

Furthermore, evaluating sources for their credibility and relevance is vital. This involves checking the qualifications of the authors, the rigor of their methodologies, and the recency of their findings. Reliable sources are peer-reviewed and come from reputable academic or scientific institutions. What is more, ensuring the credibility of sources strengthens the arguments made in a geography essay and enhances the overall understanding of the topic.

In summary, comprehensive research and careful data collection are fundamental in geography. They enable a deeper understanding of how geographical aspects shape our environment and lives, which is central to the discipline.

Planning the Essay

When you start planning a geography essay, it begins with creating an outline to organize thoughts and research. This step is crucial as it helps structure the essay logically, ensuring a smooth flow of ideas. Start by listing major points and supporting evidence. This framework guides the writing process and maintains focus on the chosen topic. Planning involves outlining the essay and crafting a compelling thesis. Planning involves outlining the essay and crafting a compelling thesis. This process ensures the essay remains focused and coherent, addressing the chosen geography topic. By establishing a clear roadmap for the essay, writers can navigate their arguments and evidence with precision, avoiding common pitfalls such as digression or ambiguity. Now, with our plan in place, let’s transition to examining the structure more closely, exploring how to effectively organize our thoughts and research into a well-structured essay that engages and informs the reader.

Writing the Essay

When you finally start writing, a geographical essay involves several key steps, each demanding attention to detail and a balance between descriptive and analytical writing. This balance is crucial in creating an essay about geography that informs, engages, and persuades.

The introduction sets the stage. Start with a hook that grabs the reader’s attention, followed by background information that provides context to the topic. This section should conclude with a clear and concise thesis statement that guides the rest of the essay.

In the body, organize paragraphs thematically or chronologically , depending on the essay’s focus. Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence that relates to the thesis. Following this, present your arguments and support them with geographical theories and data. This is where you incorporate detailed information from your research, including statistics, case studies, and examples. Make sure to explain how this data supports your arguments. A geography research paper demands precision in presenting data and clarity in its interpretation.

When discussing geographical theories, link them directly to your topic. This shows your understanding of the subject and how these theories apply to real-world scenarios. Remember, each paragraph should have a smooth transition to the next, maintaining a coherent flow of ideas.

In the conclusion, summarize the key points of your essay. Restate the thesis in light of the arguments and evidence presented. The conclusion should not introduce new information but encapsulate what the essay has covered. It’s also an opportunity to emphasize the importance of the topic, suggesting potential areas for future research or implications of your findings.

Throughout the essay, maintain a balance between descriptive and analytical writing . Descriptive writing helps paint a picture for the reader, making the data and theories more relatable. Analytical writing, on the other hand, demonstrates your ability to think critically about the topic, evaluating and interpreting the information in a meaningful way.

Examples of Geography Essays

Diversity in style and approach marks the essence of geography writing. A popular method is the comparative approach, contrasting different geographical phenomena. This method often appears in works comparing landscapes or urban vs. rural areas. Another common technique is the case study, focusing on a specific location or event for in-depth analysis of a particular issue.

Thematic approaches cover broader topics like climate change, globalization, or human migration, weaving together various theories and data for a comprehensive view. Additionally, argumentative compositions present a thesis supported by geographical evidence, frequently seen in discussions about environmental policies or land use conflicts.

Each style offers unique insights, providing varied ways to explore and understand geographical concepts and issues. For an in-depth exploration and diverse perspectives on these topics, consider reviewing geography essay examples. This resource can enrich your understanding and offer a broad spectrum of approaches to geographical analysis, from case studies on environmental conservation to essays on urban development and spatial inequalities.

• Geography Unveiled: Costa Rica’s Absolute Location Revealed
• Geography Unveiled: Navigating Earth’s Spatial Tapestry through Five Themes
• The Ever-Changing Canvas of New England Weather
• The Mystique and Marvels of the Desert Biome
• The Impact of Geography on the Development of Egypt

Unlocking the World: Key Insights from Our Geographic Exploration

This journey through the realm of geography reveals the field’s depth and complexity. From initial planning to diverse writing methods, the main insight stands out: geography compositions are more than maps and data; they are about comprehending our world’s rich tapestry. They balance descriptive narrative and critical analysis, backed by meticulous research and credible sources.

Whether exploring climate change impacts, urban developments, or cultural landscapes, these works offer a lens to see and understand the world anew. They prompt critical thinking about our environment and our place in it. Navigating various geographic topics brings not just academic insights but also life lessons in appreciating our world’s complexity and beauty.

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146 Impressive Geography Research Topics Every Student Will Like

Are you a student seeking inspiration for your next geography research project? Look no further! In this article, we present you with a treasure trove of 146 original and top-quality geography research topics, completely free of charge. Whether you’re pursuing a degree in geography or simply passionate about exploring the world around you, these topics cover a wide range of fascinating subjects.

From human geography and cultural landscapes to physical geography and environmental sustainability, we’ve got you covered. Each topic is carefully crafted to ignite your curiosity and help you delve deeper into the field. Get ready to embark on an exciting journey of exploration and discovery as you uncover unique research ideas that will captivate both you and your readers.

Areas Of Geography

Geography is a field of study that explores the Earth’s physical features, human activities and their interactions. It examines the spatial patterns, processes, and relationships between the environment and society. Geographers investigate the Earth’s surface, analyzing its landscapes, climate, ecosystems and resources, as well as the distribution of populations, cultures, economies, and political systems. There are several types of geography, each focusing on specific aspects of the Earth’s physical and human dimensions:

Physical geography examines natural phenomena like landforms, weather and ecosystems. Human geography studies human activities, such as population distribution, urbanization and cultural landscapes. Economic geography explores the spatial patterns of economic activities, trade and resource distribution. Political geography analyzes the political systems, boundaries and geopolitical relationships between regions. Environmental geography investigates the interactions between humans and the environment, including environmental issues and sustainability. Geographical information systems (GIS) and remote sensing employ technology to analyze spatial data and maps.

These subfields together provide a comprehensive understanding of the Earth’s complexities and its relationship with human society.

Easy Geography Research Paper Topics

Want to write your paper in just a couple of hours? Explore a curated list of accessible and easy geography research paper topics that will make your geography research paper writing a breeze:

• The impact of climate change on coastal regions
• Exploring the relationship between geography and tourism
• Analyzing urbanization trends in developing countries
• Investigating the effects of deforestation on biodiversity
• Examining the role of geography in natural disaster management
• Studying the cultural landscape of a specific region
• Analyzing the geography of food production and distribution
• Exploring the impact of transportation on urban development
• Investigating the geography of renewable energy sources
• Analyzing the spatial patterns of population growth
• Studying the impact of globalization on local economies
• Examining the geography of water resources and management

Human Geography Research Topics

Improve your chances of getting a top grade! Delve into the complex interplay between humans and their environment with this comprehensive list of human geography research topics:

• Exploring the social implications of gentrification in urban areas
• Analyzing the influence of gender on migration patterns
• Investigating the impact of globalization on cultural identity
• Examining the geography of poverty and social inequality
• Studying the relationship between health and geographical location
• Analyzing the spatial distribution of ethnic communities in cities
• Investigating the geography of political power and governance
• Exploring the role of geography in shaping human behavior
• Analyzing the impacts of urban sprawl on communities
• Studying the geography of education access and quality
• Examining the spatial patterns of crime and its socio-economic factors
• Investigating the geography of healthcare provision and disparities

Cultural Geography Research Topics

Interested in cultural geography? Immerse yourself in the rich tapestry of cultures and their geographical influences with this captivating list of cultural geography research topics:

• Analyzing the cultural landscapes of indigenous communities
• Exploring the impact of globalization on cultural diversity
• Investigating the geography of language and its preservation
• Examining the influence of religion on cultural landscapes
• Studying the role of cultural heritage in tourism development
• Analyzing the geography of cultural festivals and events
• Investigating the spatial patterns of cultural diffusion
• Exploring the impact of migration on cultural identities
• Analyzing the geography of music and its regional variations
• Investigating the role of food culture in shaping identities
• Examining the spatial distribution of cultural institutions
• Studying the geography of art and its impact on communities

Physical Geography Research Topics

Do you want to write about physical geography? Investigate the natural processes and phenomena shaping our planet through this collection of compelling physical geography research topics:

• Analyzing the processes of coastal erosion and their impacts
• Investigating the formation and characteristics of river systems
• Examining the effects of climate change on glacial landscapes
• Analyzing the spatial patterns of soil erosion and conservation
• Investigating the biogeography of specific ecosystems
• Exploring the impacts of climate on vegetation patterns
• Analyzing the geography of water resources and hydrology
• Investigating the formation and classification of landforms
• Examining the spatial distribution of biodiversity hotspots
• Studying the interactions between humans and the natural environment
• Exploring the impacts of urbanization on natural landscapes

Geography Thesis Topics

Are you busy planning your thesis? Engage in an in-depth exploration of geographic concepts and theories with this thought-provoking list of geography thesis topics:

• Investigating the geographical aspects of sustainable development
• Analyzing the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities
• Exploring the role of geography in disaster risk reduction
• Studying the geography of migration and refugee movements
• Examining the relationship between urban planning and social equity
• Analyzing the spatial patterns of energy consumption and renewable solutions
• Exploring the geographical dimensions of political conflicts and peacebuilding
• Investigating the role of geography in land use planning and conservation
• Examining the impacts of globalization on local economies

Urban Geography Thesis Topics

Are you interested in writing about urban geography? Analyze the complexities of urban landscapes and urbanization processes with this curated selection of urban geography thesis topics:

• Analyzing the effects of gentrification on urban neighborhoods
• Investigating the role of urban design in creating sustainable cities
• Examining the spatial patterns of urban sprawl and its consequences
• Studying the geography of social segregation in urban areas
• Analyzing the impacts of transportation systems on urban mobility
• Investigating the relationship between urbanization and public health
• Exploring the geography of informal settlements and slums
• Analyzing the impacts of urban green spaces on quality of life
• Investigating the geography of urban food systems and food security
• Examining the role of technology in shaping smart cities
• Studying the spatial distribution of cultural and recreational amenities in cities

PhD Research Topics In Geography

Expand the boundaries of geographical knowledge and contribute to the field with this diverse and stimulating list of PhD research topics in geography:

• Analyzing the geography of environmental justice in urban areas
• Investigating the impacts of climate change on indigenous communities
• Examining the role of geography in disaster risk governance
• Studying the spatial patterns of land use change in rapidly urbanizing regions
• Analyzing the impacts of transportation infrastructure on accessibility and equity
• Investigating the geographical dimensions of health inequalities
• Exploring the relationship between globalization and urbanization processes
• Analyzing the geography of political conflicts and territorial disputes
• Investigating the impacts of natural resource extraction on local communities
• Studying the spatial dynamics of international migration and its consequences
• Exploring the geography of innovation and knowledge economies in cities

Captivating Research Topics In Geography

Looking for some captivating research topics in geography? Ignite curiosity and scholarly interest with this awesome collection of research topics that delve into various aspects of geography:

• Investigating the geography of mega-cities and their challenges
• Analyzing the impacts of climate change on vulnerable coastal regions
• Exploring the spatial patterns of cultural landscapes and heritage sites
• Studying the geography of borderlands and transnational interactions
• Examining the impacts of tourism on local communities and environments
• The role of geography in understanding human-environment interactions
• Analyzing the spatial distribution of environmental pollution and its impacts
• Exploring the geography of global food systems and agricultural practices
• Investigating the impacts of natural disasters on urban resilience
• Examining the role of geography in understanding urban inequalities
• Studying the geography of geopolitical conflicts and their implications
• Exploring the impacts of technological advancements on landscapes

Interesting Geography Research Topics

Discover a wide range of interesting geography research topics that will pique your professor’s curiosity and offer new insights into the world of geography:

• Analyzing the impacts of climate change on glacier retreat and water resources
• Investigating the geography of renewable energy transition and its challenges
• Examining the spatial patterns of urban heat islands and their mitigation strategies
• Studying the impacts of land use change on biodiversity conservation
• Investigating the role of geography in understanding cultural diversity
• Exploring the geography of disease outbreaks and their spatial spread
• Investigating the impacts of natural hazards on human vulnerability and resilience
• Examining the spatial distribution of ecological corridors
• Studying the geography of regional economic disparities and development strategies
• Exploring the impacts of transportation infrastructure on urban accessibility
• The role of geography in understanding weather patterns

Good Geography Research Topics For 2023

Looking for some current topics to write about? Choose from a list of good geography research topics for 2023 that showcase the relevance and significance of geography in today’s world:

• Impacts of population growth on urban infrastructure and services in geography
• Geography of water scarcity and its implications for communities
• Spatial patterns of environmental conservation and protected areas in geography
• Impacts of land degradation on agricultural productivity and food security
• Geography of natural resource management and sustainable practices
• Relationship between climate change and human migration patterns in geography
• Spatial distribution of environmental justice and marginalized communities
• Impacts of urbanization on water pollution and ecosystem degradation
• Geography of renewable energy sources and their integration into the grid
• Role of geography in understanding regional conflicts over natural resources
• Impacts of deforestation on biodiversity loss and ecosystem services

Geography Topics For Research For College

Need some great geography topics for research for college? Explore a comprehensive list of geography research topics tailored for college-level studies, offering opportunities for critical analysis and exploration:

• Impacts of transportation infrastructure on urban air quality in geography
• Geography of urban gentrification and displacement
• Spatial patterns of urban food waste and its environmental consequences
• Impacts of tourism development on fragile ecosystems in geography
• Geography of environmental migration and its social implications
• Role of geography in understanding climate adaptation strategies
• Spatial distribution of environmental inequalities and environmental racism
• Impacts of land use change on water quality in agricultural regions
• Geography of geopolitical conflicts and territorial disputes
• Impacts of industrial pollution on urban health and well-being
• Role of geography in understanding disaster preparedness

Interesting Geography Topics For High School

Get the most interesting geography topics for high school. Foster geographical curiosity and critical thinking skills with this intriguing list of essay topics designed specifically by our best dissertation service writers for high school students:

• Analyzing the impacts of climate change on the polar regions
• Investigating the geography of natural hazards
• Examining the spatial distribution of endangered species
• Studying the impacts of urbanization on wildlife habitat fragmentation
• Exploring the geography of cultural diversity and multiculturalism in cities
• Investigating the role of geography in understanding climate variability
• Analyzing the spatial patterns of population distribution and density
• Investigating the geography of international migration and refugee flows
• Examining the impacts of tourism on local communities and cultures
• Studying the geography of natural resources
• Exploring the role of geography in understanding global inequality

Engaging Geographical Research Topics

Embark on a captivating journey of geographical exploration with this diverse collection of engaging geographical research topics, connecting people, places and the environment through insightful investigations:

• Urban sprawl impacts on land use and ecosystem services in geography
• Geography of renewable energy transition and its challenges
• Spatial patterns of urban heat islands and impacts on residents
• Impacts of climate change on coastal erosion and shoreline management
• Geography of water scarcity and implications for human populations
• Role of geography in understanding geopolitical conflicts and peacebuilding
• Spatial distribution of environmental pollutants and health effects
• Impacts of globalization on local economies and cultural landscapes
• Geography of gender inequalities and spatial dimensions
• Impacts of natural disasters on vulnerable communities and recovery
• Role of geography in understanding migration dynamics and urbanization
• Geography of political borders and their social and economic implications

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When it comes to working on a geography research paper or a thesis for Master’s degree , our company is your trusted source for comprehensive writing help. Our team of expert writers consists of experienced professionals who specialize in geography, ensuring that you receive top marks for your school or class. We pride ourselves on delivering high quality and impressive custom written theses tailored to your specific requirements.

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Why is choosing a great topic important when writing a geography essay?

Choosing a great topic ensures that your essay is engaging, relevant, and allows you to demonstrate your understanding of key geographical concepts while capturing the reader’s interest.

How can I choose a great topic for my geography essay?

To choose a great topic, consider current geographical issues, areas of personal interest and the availability of reliable sources. Additionally, ensure that the topic aligns with your essay’s objectives and requirements.

What are some strategies for narrowing down a geography essay topic?

To narrow down your topic, focus on specific geographical regions, phenomena, or concepts. Consider exploring the intersections between different aspects of geography, such as human and physical geography, to create a unique and well-rounded essay topic.

Can I get assistance in choosing a great topic for my geography essay?

Yes, you can seek guidance from your instructor, consult reputable academic resources or utilize online platforms that provide topic suggestions. Engaging in discussions with peers or experts in the field can also help generate ideas and refine your topic choice.

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Geography Extended Essay Topics: 30+ Ideas to Get You Started

by  Antony W

September 2, 2022

Up until now, you’ve learned what a Geography Extended Essay is, how to choose the right topic to explore, and how to treat the topic.  Still, coming up with relevant Geography Extended Essay topics can be a big challenge, especially if you aren’t so creative.

Geography Extended Essay Help

Geography is an interesting subject, but it’s equally involving because it requires a lot of reading and extensive research.

So if you’ve chosen this IB subject for your Extended Essay project, you’ll need to schedule enough time to choose a topic, develop your research, and work on the EE within the predefined scope of the assignment.

If you’ve started working on the project and already find it overwhelming,  click here to check our EE writing help .  Hire Help for Assessment writers, and we’ll help you get the work completed in the shortest time possible.

The advantage of our writing service is that we’re timely.

In other words, we’ve customized our writing help such that you get your paper delivered to you at least 2 hour before the deadline. As such, you never have to worry about running late with your submission or missing a draft to present in your reflection meetings. 

30+ Best IB Geography Extended Essay Topics 

To help make the topic selection process easier, we’ve put together a list of 30+ IB Geography Extended Essay topics for inspiration.

Check them out below. 

• How much does the risk of arsenic poisoning diminish when one moves away from certain Bangladeshi river routes and irrigated areas?
• Does air quality increase away from one of London's busiest roundabouts as one travels over a transect of 10 kilometers?
• How does Lake Vatten affect the fall weather in the area (the microclimate)?
• Should we believe that Singapore is the "Harmonious home" that Goh Chok Tong proclaimed it to be in 2012?
• Analysis of Warsaw's municipal service availability throughout the city's various neighborhoods
• How does the proximity of low and high-income neighborhoods in an LEDC vary with elevation and distance from the central business district?
• What socioeconomic elements and features of Eindhoven's urban design contribute to the city's high vandalism rates?
• How well do the migration patterns and causes in northern Thailand fit the profile of movements typical of an LEDC?
• Is there a correlation between the rate of literacy and the rate of extreme poverty in some Indian states and regions?
• A look at whether or not Singapore meets the criteria for a sustainable metropolis.
• How well do some of Ethiopia's eco-lodges meet Martha Honey's standards for "green" travel?
• Is there a correlation between the quality of life in northern and southern Mexico and the rate at which people migrate to the United States of America?
• How environmentally sustainable is the Township of Langley's business waste management program?
• What is the relationship between vandalism and the length of time spent away from a central business district?
• When compared to their home country, how would you rate the quality of living enjoyed by Filipinas working as foreign domestic workers in Singapore's Downtown area?
• Does Addis Abeba's nightlife improve or worsen as a function of the city's demographics?
• How has globalization changed the sound of music in certain middle-income and low-income countries?
• How do differences in gender, level of education, and working conditions affect the probability of becoming overweight?
• Does farming in certain Kenyan rural areas conform to Von Thunen's concept of land use?
• Are lower traffic volumes a result of the congestion charges imposed on vehicles entering central London?
• How much of a gap exists between the actual and ideal fertility rates in Singapore, and what causes this gap?
• How much does the rate of female infanticide rise when one moves away from a large city?
• How well is Menagesha state forest maintained ecologically, and what is its ecological value?
• Is there a difference in Ethiopia between the metropolitan center of Addis Ababa and the more rural city of Harar when it comes to women's reproductive health?
• How much have rising temperatures in Singapore caused people to feel less at ease in their own homes?
• The development of an Atlas Information System Project for Global Mapping
• Geographical phenomenon structure, connection, and dynamics models
• Structure, relationship, and dynamics models of spatially extended phenomena
• Asian, African, and Latin American "regions of underdevelopment" compared and contrasted
• Using and safeguarding the seas' natural complexity is a worldwide human issue
• A timeline of humankind's progress through the ages, charting the methods through which space has been explored on Earth.
• Modeling techniques in the geographic information system and their potential and limits
• Thoughts and insights gained from working on multimedia geographic information systems.
• The role that human geography plays in the formation of society and the processes that make it up.
• The significance of mountains in maintaining the integrity of our planet Earth's surface and atmosphere
• The primary factor responsible for the majority of the province of British Columbia's wildfire outbreaks
• The influence that geography has on the functioning of the government and the formulation of new policies
• The various kinds of atmospheric gases and the roles they play in people's lives.
• The areas of the world that are most likely to be affected by the effects of global warming
• Creating a disaster management strategy that is the most effective possible
• Examine the size, location, and population density of cities all across the world and draw some conclusions.
• Talk about the mountains, rivers, deserts, plains, forests, and lakes that make up the North American continent.
• What potential issues may arise if one biome encroached into the area of another?
• Explore the impact of various modes of transportation on global patterns of human habitation.
• Explore the link between economic opportunity and global population dispersion.
• Outline the ways in which people have altered their environment via the extraction and consumption of raw materials
• Talk about the ways in which people's lives are interconnected through various forms of electronic communication
• Explain the global impact of temperature shifts on transportation networks.
• Describe the ways in which the residents of your city or town have modified the landscape over time.

Related Reading

• Chemistry Extended Essay Topics
• History Extended Essay Topics

Final Thoughts

We hope that this long list of topic ideas helps you to find the right topic from which you can formulate a research question to explore.

About the author 

Antony W is a professional writer and coach at Help for Assessment. He spends countless hours every day researching and writing great content filled with expert advice on how to write engaging essays, research papers, and assignments.

How the World Became Rich by Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin and Slouching Towards Utopia, by J. Bradford DeLong: A Review Essay

This essay provides a review of two important recent books on economic growth: How the World Became Rich by Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin and Slouching Towards Utopia, by J. Bradford DeLong. Each book is noteworthy for its erudition and breadth. I explore strengths and weaknesses of these books and make some proposals on new ways to conceptualize and study long run socioeconomic development. My discussion emphasizes the importance of contingency in determining long run inequalities across countries as well the potential for ideas from complexity theory to augment standard growth modelling.

Financial support from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation is appreciated. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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IB Extended Essay Topics: Geography

As a seasoned IB writer, I’ve had the pleasure and challenge of walking the complex terrain of the IB Diploma Programme (DP), particularly when it comes to writing a compelling Geography Extended Essay. Surprisingly, the very first problem many students face is choosing an appropriate topic and research question. Drawing from my experience, I aim to guide you through this choice with insights and advice to make your writing process smoother, more engaging, and more rewarding.

Understanding the IB DP Geography Extended Essay

First, let’s discuss what the IB DP Geography Extended Essay entails. This demanding yet fascinating task invites you to dig into a topic of your choice within the expansive and multifaceted world of geography. It’s an unparalleled chance to conduct a deep investigation into an area that piques your interest and holds significant academic value. From my perspective, crafting an exceptional essay involves selecting a topic that meets the rigorous IB criteria and ignites your passion. Your genuine enthusiasm for the subject is a beacon that illuminates your research, compellingly drawing the reader into your analytical path.

The Geography Extended Essay’s ability to intertwine scientific investigation with cultural understanding makes it stand out. It offers a platform where quantitative data meets qualitative insights. This blend provides a rich tapestry for exploration, allowing students to showcase their ability to research complex topics with precision and empathy. Here are a few reasons why choosing the right topic is crucial:

• Ensuring your topic aligns with the IB’s expectations is paramount. This alignment guarantees that your essay meets the fundamental requirements, paving the way for a successful evaluation.
• A topic that resonates with you will make the research process more enjoyable and engaging. Passion about your subject shows in the depth and quality of your analysis.
• Choosing a unique angle or a current issue can make your essay stand out. Topics that offer fresh perspectives or address timely questions are often more compelling and impactful.
• The best topics allow for deep analytical thinking. Look for areas where you can apply geographical theories and concepts to real-world scenarios.

In light of these considerations, choosing the perfect topic becomes integral to the extended essay-writing process. It requires careful thought, creativity, and strategic planning.

Exciting Areas of Study in IB DP Geography

As diverse and expansive as the earth’s landscapes, geography as a discipline is a goldmine of fascinating topics ripe for exploration. Within its broad scope, you can move from the Arctic’s melting ice caps to the megacities’ bustling streets. Among its many fascinating branches, environmental and urban geography stand out for their relevance to our world today and their ability to generate deep, original research and insightful analysis. Here are some other compelling areas within IB DP Geography that offer rich avenues for exploration.

Cultural Geography

This area examines cultural practices, norms, and products and their relationships with the places and spaces where they originate. It invites deep research into the diversity of human cultures and their expressions worldwide.

Political Geography

An investigation into the spatial distribution of political processes and systems, including the study of boundaries, territories, and the geopolitics of resource distribution. This field provides insights into the complex interplay between geography and political power.

Economic Geography

This area focuses on how economies are spatially and environmentally distributed and how they influence global, regional, and local economic activities. It touches on topics such as globalization, trade, and economic development.

Physical Geography

This branch examines the natural processes and features of the Earth, including the study of landforms, climates, and vegetation and how these elements interact. It provides a foundational understanding of the physical world that we inhabit.

GIS and Remote Sensing

With the advent of technology, the ability to analyze spatial data through Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and observe the Earth through remote sensing has opened new geographic frontiers. These tools allow for the sophisticated analysis and visualization of geographical data, offering insights into various spatial phenomena.

IB Geography Extended Essay Topics and Research Questions

Below, I’ll share some topic ideas and research questions that could guide your exploration:

• The Impact of Climate Change on Coral Reefs . How is climate change affecting coral reef ecosystems in the Great Barrier Reef?
• Urbanization and Its Effects on Local Climate . How does urbanization influence microclimate conditions in major cities?
• Renewable Energy Sources and Geographic Potential . What is the potential for solar energy in Sub-Saharan Africa based on geographic and climatic conditions?
• Water Scarcity and Conflict in the Middle East . How does water scarcity contribute to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East?
• Effects of Tourism on Natural Landscapes . How does tourism impact erosion and natural landscapes in the Himalayas?
• Sustainable Agriculture Practices in Arid Regions . How do sustainable agricultural practices improve food security in arid regions?
• Economic Geography of the Coffee Trade . How does the global coffee trade impact Colombia’s economic conditions?
• Deforestation and Biodiversity Loss in the Amazon . What are the effects of deforestation on biodiversity in the Amazon Rainforest?
• Geopolitical Implications of Arctic Melting . How does the melting of Arctic ice influence geopolitical strategies and claims?
• Impact of Sea Level Rise on Coastal Communities . What are the adaptive strategies of coastal communities in Southeast Asia facing sea level rise?
• Cultural Geography and Identity in Border Regions . How do border dynamics influence cultural identity in the Basque region?
• Smart Cities and Urban Sustainability . How do smart city initiatives contribute to urban sustainability in Singapore?
• E-waste Management and Environmental Justice . What are the environmental justice issues surrounding e-waste management in Ghana?
• Public Transportation and Urban Air Quality . How does the development of public transportation systems affect air quality in European capitals?
• The Role of Green Spaces in Mental Health . How do urban green spaces impact mental health outcomes in densely populated cities?
• Impact of Plastic Pollution on Marine Life . How does plastic pollution in the Pacific Ocean impact the biodiversity of marine life in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
• Sustainable Urban Development in Emerging Economies . What strategies are being employed to promote sustainable urban development in the cities of India?
• Geographic Factors Influencing Renewable Energy Adoption . Which geographic factors most significantly influence the adoption of wind energy in Northern Europe?
• Land Use Changes and Their Impact on Local Water Systems . How have changes in land use affected the hydrology of the Mississippi River Basin?
• Migration Patterns and Climate Change . What role does climate change play in shaping migration patterns in Sub-Saharan Africa?
• Food Security and Climate Variability . How does climate variability affect food security in the Andean region?
• The Geography of Digital Divide . How does the digital divide manifest in rural vs. urban areas in the United States?
• Volcanic Activity and Tourism . What is the impact of volcanic activity on tourism in Iceland?
• Conservation Efforts in Biodiversity Hotspots . How effective are conservation efforts in protecting biodiversity in Madagascar?
• The Economic Geography of Silk Road Trade Routes . How have historic Silk Road trade routes influenced the economic geography of Central Asia today?
• Geography of Health: Access to Healthcare in Remote Areas . What geographic factors influence access to healthcare in remote areas of Canada?
• Urban Heat Islands and Mitigation Strategies . What strategies are most effective in mitigating urban heat islands in Tokyo?
• Glacial Retreat and Global Water Supply . How is glacial retreat in the Himalayas expected to impact global water supply?
• Cultural Landscapes and Heritage Conservation . How do cultural landscapes contribute to heritage conservation in Tuscany, Italy?
• Social Geography of Homelessness in Urban Centers . What are the spatial patterns of homelessness in San Francisco, and what factors contribute to these patterns?
• Desertification and Livelihood in Sub-Saharan Africa . How is desertification affecting rural livelihoods in the Sahel region of Sub-Saharan Africa?
• The Geography of Internet Connectivity . What geographic factors contribute to Brazil’s digital divide between urban and rural areas?
• Impact of High-Speed Rail on Regional Development . How has introducing high-speed rail impacted regional development and urban-rural integration in China?
• Climate Change Adaptation Strategies in Small Island Developing States . What strategies are Small Island Developing States (SIDS) implementing to adapt to climate change impacts?
• The Role of Geographic Location in Startup Ecosystems . How does geographic location influence the success and concentration of startup ecosystems, with a specific focus on Silicon Valley?
• Agricultural Practices and Soil Erosion . How do traditional vs. modern agricultural practices affect soil erosion rates in the Midwest United States?
• Geographic Patterns of Renewable Energy Usage . What are the geographic patterns of renewable energy usage in Scandinavia, and how does physical geography influence them?
• The Effect of Mountain Ranges on Climate . How do mountain ranges, such as the Rockies, affect the climate and weather patterns of the adjacent regions?
• Urban Sprawl and Wildlife Habitat . What impact does urban sprawl have on wildlife habitat and biodiversity in the outskirts of European capitals?
• Geography and the Spread of Infectious Diseases . How have geographic factors influenced the spread and impact of infectious diseases, with a case study on COVID-19 in densely populated cities?
• Impact of Agricultural Policies on Rural Landscapes . How have European agricultural policies shaped the rural landscapes in France?
• The Influence of Coastal Erosion on Maritime Boundaries . What impact does coastal erosion have on maritime boundaries and territorial disputes?
• Socio-economic Effects of Natural Disasters . How do natural disasters like hurricanes affect the socioeconomic stability of Caribbean nations?
• Geographical Analysis of Global Trade Flows . What geographical factors influence the flow of trade between China and Africa?
• Water Management Strategies in Arid Regions . How are innovative water management strategies combating desertification in Israel?
• Impact of Urban Green Spaces on Air Quality . How do urban green spaces influence air quality in densely populated cities like Tokyo?
• Geography of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights . How does geography play a role in defending indigenous peoples’ land rights in the Amazon?
• Climate Change and Wine Production . How is climate change altering the geographical distribution of wine-producing regions in Europe?
• Geopolitical Strategies for Arctic Resources . What geopolitical strategies are countries employing to access Arctic resources?
• Population Aging and Urban Infrastructure . How is population aging affecting urban infrastructure needs in major Japanese cities?
• Mapping Epidemics with GIS Technology . How is GIS technology being used to track and manage epidemic outbreaks globally?
• Economic Impact of Ecotourism . What are the economic impacts of ecotourism in East African communities?
• Spatial Analysis of Crime in Urban Areas . How can spatial analysis help understand crime patterns in major US cities?
• Sea Level Rise and Island Nation Sovereignty . What are the implications of rising sea levels for the sovereignty of low-lying island nations?
• Impact of Road Infrastructure on Deforestation . How has expanding road infrastructure contributed to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon?

These topics span various branches of geography, aiming to inspire a range of interests and research directions.

Don’t let the stress of the IB curriculum hold you back.

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Topics to Read:

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Finally, I’d like to offer a few final words of wisdom. Engaging your reader with a compelling narrative, demonstrating your critical thinking, and showing originality in your analysis will set your essay apart. Trust me, paying attention to these details can take your essay from good to exceptional. So, armed with these insights and strategies, you’re better equipped to begin your writing process. I wish you all the best and look forward to seeing where your intellectual curiosity takes you in the vast and varied landscape of IB DP Geography. Also, remember that our IB experts are always ready to help you with Extended Essay writing.

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Geography Essay Examples and Topics

Advantages and disadvantages of urbanization essay.

• Words: 1552

Study of Earth Systems

Animals and their habitat, importance of parks in modern cities, physical geography and its effects on humans, winter and summer seasons comparison, gis data organization: spatial data structure & models.

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London as a Global City Essay

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Map Making History and Development

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Global Village Concept Explained

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Nairobi National Park in Kenya

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Hurricanes Causes and Effects

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How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

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Biosphere Evolution and Threats

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National Geographic Travelers Magazine analysis

Geography and history in the classroom.

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Role of Planning Professionals

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Five Countries Geography: Southeast Asia

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Geography of United Kingdom

Doreen massey’s concept of a global sense of place.

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The UAE Cultural Analysis: Adherence to Traditions, Cultural Beliefs, and Values

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City of Perth, Australia Exploration

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World Geography: Russian and North America’s Climate

History of nigeria.

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Decoding, interpreting, understanding and explaining landscapes

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Hokkaido Island of Japan

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Physical, Human, and Economic Geography of Italians

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Personal Statement for a Major in Geography and Planning

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Mountains Characteristics

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Mekong Delta: Facts, Definition, Map, History, & Location

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Argentina’s Geographical Information

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1996 Mount Everest Disaster: Leadership Perspective

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Geography, Mapping, and Cartography

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Spain’s Geography and Culture

How gps locates and finds the user position.

• Words: 1636

Five Themes of Geography Applied to Africa

How deep sea discoveries inspires professional creativity, chapter 12.6 of economic geography by coe et al., unesco paper: the grand canyon national park.

• Words: 1732

Spain: Brief Characteristic of the Country

Bermuda triangle and its definition.

• Words: 1002

Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement

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Miami Geographical Aspects

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Climate Zones of the United States

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The Miami Beach

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Monsoons in South Asia

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The Discussion of Lansing City

Geography’s role in diving the north from the south, regional analysis of surrey, british columbia, the nunavut region as canada’s last frontier, canadian regional geography in photographs, trinidad and tobago’s sustainability analysis, my home: pittsburgh, pennsylvania, studying nature: alexander von humboldt, world’s columbian exposition of chicago, the grand canyon and its potential, environmental anthropology and human survival at the arctic biome.

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A Baseline Analysis of Blackburn With Darwen

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Does Mercator Projection Adequately Represent the Real Size of the Country

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Atlantic City, the City in the United States

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Native Dune Systems vs. Man-Made Beach Structures

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The Rocky Mountains as the Best Symbol of Canada

Biodiversity and dynamics of mountainous area near the house.

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Campania, Italy: Geographic Analysis

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How Glacier Mass and Mass Balance Are Linked

Literacy and numeracy in the geography subject area.

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Coal Energy and Reserves in New Zealand

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The Climate in New York, Miami and Chicago

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The Six Elements of Geography

Maps, atlases and their essential components.

IB Geography EE examples

Filter exemplars, to what extent does the quality of services in shopping malls in vilnius affect their spheres of influence based on akropolis and mada, to what extent can the difference in quality of life between poznań and zielona góra in 2023 be interpreted as a consequence of shock therapy in poland from the 1990s, want to get full marks for your ee allow us to review it for you 🎯, to what extent zhagalau neighborhood of astana, kazakhstan is environmentally sustainable in 2023, to what extent is it possible to predict the results of the eurovision song contest based on observable geopolitical and cultural patterns, to what extent are the nutrition transition and epidemiological transition models applicable to studying the spatial variation of noncommunicable diseases in new york city and jakarta, fast track your coursework with mark schemes moderated by ib examiners. upgrade now 🚀, what are the main causes and impacts affecting portugal’s transition to renewable energy during the 21st century, to what extent have the smart initiatives implemented in punggol has enhanced the liveability of its residents, how has the construction of masianokeng lifestyle shopping centre impacted the lives of masianokeng community and other neighboring communities, to what extent is frankfurt involved in sustainable urban development, analyzing the areas of riedberg and praunheim, to what extent do socio-economic factors, in particular, accessibility, land costs, geographical location, and availability of resources, influence the location of industries in the gdansk metropolitan area, to what extent can models and concepts described in the geography of transport systems by jean-paul rodrigue explain the relatively low traffic numbers at mostar international airport, flooding in the sumas prairie: to what extent is the sumas prairie at risk of a flood with magnitude of the 2021 november event, to what extent can the mangroves on st.john’s island benefit from restoration techniques used in other locations in singapore, to what extent can the increase in crime through ashaier divisions in the city of hebron from 2014 to 2021 be attributed to socioeconomic and geographical concentrated disparities, how has the revitalization of jurong lake gardens improved the quality of life of local residents and visitors, to what extent has south africa’s agrarian land reform programme been successful at promoting socio-economic development within the country’s agricultural sector, how does the upper course of the savegre river influence the local temperature (micro-climate) during the month of january, “to what extent can ecotourism at the can gio mangrove biosphere reserve, ho chi minh city,vietnam be considered successful”, spatio-temporal analysis of high-risk dengue clusters in bedok and jurong areas of singapore, to what extent does mountain biking affect the ecological health of mount fromme, to what extent does the standard of living within nur-sultan differentiate between the neighborhoods esil and baikonur in 2021, to what extent did transportation time, effect x gymnasium’s students’ academic performance, during the school year of 2020-21, before quarantine, how has tourism economically and environmentally affected the community of ‘muela, in what ways is greening the areas of warsaw a sustainable way of improving the standard of life in the city, to what extent does the life expectancy, education, and gross national income (gni) per capita influence the effectiveness of healthcare services in maseru, lesotho during the covid-19 pandemic, to what extent is traffic congestion a problem in maseru cbd, the effect of covid-19 on the tourism income of athens, to what extent are apartment prices affected by the quality of public services in different districts of lodz, to what extent has air pollution from the transportation sector decreased between 2005 and 2017 in paris, france due to the implementation of mitigation strategies for global climate change, contemporary study of the influence of the education and employment of women on the fertility rates in singapore, the classification of dulwich college singapore’s microclimate: an inquiry into the institution’s degree of urban and nature reserve microclimatic character.

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Geography Topics For your Essay, Dissertation or Research Paper

Published by Ellie Cross at November 1st, 2021 , Revised On November 3, 2023

Geography investigates some of the most pressing issues from around the world. When you think about geography, your brain starts to imagine maps, places, people, animals, plants, historical sites, religious sites, dark places, and the relationship between these elements.

For example, a recent study conducted by undergraduate students of Sydney university explored the relationship between consuming smashed avocados and how that affected the homeowner.

If you are studying geography at a university, we understand that it can be challenging to develop an intriguing, unique, and manageable topic . This article provides hundreds of free geography topics for your essay or dissertation so that you can choose the most suitable one for your needs.

Food and Nutrition Security Geography Topics

Nutritional geography or the geography of food is perhaps one of the most underrated and the least explored branch of human geography. It deals with the patterns of food supply, food consumption, and food shortages worldwide. Here are some unique and interesting topics in this subject area for you to consider for your essay or dissertation.

• Rethinking food security – Geopolitics, land grabs, and the rhetoric of food security
• Hunger in an era of global food security – A look into the challenges and opportunities
• Investigating the hunger and malnutrition that exists in Africa with a focus on any African country of your choice
• Evaluating the relationship between the human population and the world’s food resources over the last 20 years
• Discuss the reasons why more than 1 billion people in the world don’t have enough food each day
• Growing more food or maintaining the sustainability of the sources that grow food – What is more important?
• An investigation into the working and living conditions of the Indian farmers
• How do the farmers who grow food in South Asia end up going hungry themselves?
• The role of religion, family and culture history on food practices and nutritional status
• To what extent does poverty determine access to food availability
• Nutritional geography – History and trends
• A review of the geography of food consumption
• The Nigerian food system: Traditional and model
• How efficient is the world’s food supply – A critical analysis
• Why do we eat what we eat?
• The quest for food: Globalisation, economy and politics

Human & Political Geography or the Politics of Public Spaces Geography Topics

Human and political geography is an exciting area of geography that deals with population territories, population conflicts, distribution of population, adaption in modern society, concepts of overpopulation, the emergence of states, spatial administration structures, boundaries and frontiers, demographic transition, and more.

• A review of the deteriorating relationship between humankind and the environment
• The birth of territory from a historical perspective
• A companion to border studies – how nations and cultures are transforming by their dynamic, shifting borders where mobility is sometimes facilitated, other times impeded or prevented
• Exploring the new border geopolitics of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Azerbaijan.
• Different attitudes of political geography and geopolitics to Covid-19
• Political Geography: Society, state and territory
• A review of the framework of political geography
• Myths and realities of the Chinese political geography
• A discussion on the boundary narratives in political geography
• A review of the disorderly public and democracy from a political geography standpoint
• Distribution of the population of the world from the in the post-modern world
• Analysis of the overpopulation problem in India
• Identifying the regions of the recurrent floods, droughts, and other natural hazards in the world

Also read other essay topics: Mental health essay topics

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Climate Change and Environment Geography Topics

Climate change and environment geography deal with a range of issues, including climatology, earth’s atmosphere, weather and climate, insolation and heat balance, atmospheric temperature and humidity, clouds, precipitation, hydrologic cycles, world patterns of rainfalls.

• Understanding how past natural and anthropogenic climate variability has shaped our planet and human history.
• Environmental inequalities of toxic waste release inventory facilities in India
• Investigating the relationship between men’s dwelling and the environment?
• An examination of the air pollution levels in Delhi (India)
• Identifying the ecosystems in danger of collapsing
• The new geography of contemporary urbanisation and the environment
• People and environment: Behavioural approaches in human geography
• The geography of Great Britain: Environment, people and economy
• Examination of the man-environment relationships in geography
• Assessing the role of climate in human life
• Global warming – The myths and the realities
• Geography and the environment in Russia
• A discussion on environmental geography and natural hazards
• The geography of climate change adaptation in South Asia
• Examination of the world patterns of rain falls over in the 21 st
• Addressing biodiversity loss: Lessons from climate change

Economic Geography Topics

Economic geography covers a wide range of concepts of geography, including but not limited to natural resources, international business, textile industries, cities and commercial activities, trade and transport, green revolution, oil and gas, and classification of economies. Here are some topics in this area that you can consider for your geography essay or dissertation.

• Discuss the application of evolutionary economic geography
• A review of the relationship between economic geography and industrial dynamics
• The emerging empirics of evolutionary economic geography
• Geography of institutions and economic development.
• Why is economic geography not considered an evolutionary science?
• Economic development and economic geography in the Indus region
• Demography, geography and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa
• New economic geography – Challenges and opportunities
• Russian Socio-economic geography: Current status, opportunities and challenges.
• Discuss the models of economic geography – Subtleties, valuation and appraisal.
• Oil and the economic geography of Saudi Arabia
• Decoding the wage gap: Services availability, economic geography and Heckscher-Ohlin
• Review of the Helpman-Hansom model – New economic geography in Germany
• The relationship between economic geography and multinational firms
• Investigating the relationship between geography, economics and religion – The case of Pakistan.
• A look at the politics and practice in economic geography
• The impact of religions and nations on economic geography
• The age of the electric vehicle – Geography of urban transportation

Geomorphology Topics

Geomorphology consists of physical geography, continental drift, plate tectonics, earth movements, weathering, mass wasting, and so much more. Here are some ideas for you to think about. You can customise any of the following topics according to any geographical location.

• Examining the relationship between sedimentology and geomorphology
• Use of soil geomorphology for field base geologic research
• Environmental issues in Africa and the contribution of geomorphological research
• Geomorphological research of large scale instability at Machu Picchu
• Rainfalls simulators in hydrological and geomorphological sciences; Benefits, applications and future research directions.
• A review of the recent advances in research on the Aeolian geomorphology of China’s Kumtagh Sand Sea

Oceanology Topics

Oceanology is an area of geography that deals with specific geographic locations. Here are some examples of topics to help you get started with your own essay or dissertation.

• Discuss the advances in oceanology and marine biology
• The potential impact of offshore wind farms on fishes and invertebrates
• Marine debris in green sea turtles along the Northern Coast of Taiwan
• An examination of the Sabaki Tilapia Aquaculture in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
• Understanding submarine groundwater discharge and its importance in nearshore science
• A discussion on the iron degradation on a deep-ocean ship-wreck
• The impact of environmental pollutants on water quality
• Feasibility, functioning and future of MPAs in mainland Tanzania

Bio-Geography Topics

Biogeography covers a range of issues, including the earth’s energy budget, tropic levels, concepts of biomes, domestication of life, biodiversity, habitat decay, habitat conversation, and more. Here are some bio-geography topics to base your essay or dissertation.

• Analysing the European approaches to managed re-alignment
• Flooding and environmental challenges for Venice and its Lagoon
• Effects of climate and land change on river hydrology of Thailand
• Agent-based models of disease transmission in a small population
• Establishing the link between climate change and lawn growth
• A look at the Mediterranean ecosystem changes
• Applicants of airborne remote sensing to the conservation management of a West African National Park
• Air pollution and ground disturbance in the Russian Arctic
• An examination of the large scale coastal morphology: A review of Winterton Ness, UK
• The changing flora, fauna and sedimentation of the Pacific Coast of Mexico

Population and Human Geography Topics

Population and human geography is perhaps the most researched area of geography. It covers a range of issues including but not limited to economic activities of mankind, human races, population patterns, population growth, man-environment relationships, population programmes and policies, and so much more. Here are some topics for you to think about.

• An in-depth investigation of the population geography from a historical perspective.
• Humanitarian crises, population displacements and epidemics diseases.
• Long run cause of death series for national populations.
• International comparative work on the occupational structure and population geography
• The pressure of population on the world’s resources is increasing – A myth or reality?
• A look at the population distribution patterns in South Asia in the last century
• Discuss and critique population theories
• Can we grow enough organic food for the entire world’s population?
• Comparing the different data sources used by government, business and media for demographics
• Investigating the world’s population issues and proposing workable solutions
• Discuss the population challenges the world is facing and the policy responses.
• Analyse the economic consequences of the increasing population of India.
• To examine the world population patterns with a focus on countries such as India
• Discuss the most notable population theories
• Population policies for the next 30 years – A review of the existing literature
• Race and ethnicity facts and information

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Settlement Geography Topics

Some topics for settlement geography are listed below for you to choose from for your essay or dissertation. Don’t worry if you don’t like any of the below topics. Our consultants are here to provide specific settlement geography topics.

• What are the factors affecting the location of human settlements?
• Settlements come in many different sizes – Discuss the settlement hierarchy
• Identify and discuss various settlement patterns
• A review of the linear development in the Amazon rainforest
• Examination of the different settlement models employed around the world
• Ecological studies in the coastal waters of Kalpakkam, East Coast of India, Bay of Bengal
• A study of refugee settlement in regional Australia
• An evaluation of settlement geography with reference to India
• Rural settlement spatial patterns and effects: Road traffic accessibility and geographic factors in Guangdong Province, China
• The history and current trends of research on rural settlement geography in China
• A review of the history of settlement and urban development in Australia or the United States.
• A study of Afghan refugee settlement in tribal areas of Pakistan
• The past and contemporary key research issues in rural settlement geography in South Africa

Cartography Topics

Cartography deals with the maps, signs & symbols, drawing of profiles and depicting relief on the map, isotherms, isobar, isohyets, data analysis % mapping, scatter diagrams, and land surveying. Here are some ideas to inspire you.

• Discuss the importance of cartography in Geography
• Geospatial big data and cartography: Research challenges and opportunities for making maps that better
• Discuss the methods and techniques employed to create, maintain and use geographical information databases.
• Evaluate the use of GIS for producing and analysing map features
• Explore the new theoretical research trends in cartography.
• Examine the use of maps in the exploration of geographic data.
• How can GIS benefit research projects?
• A review of the contemporary American cartographic research
• A review of the history of map-making, cartographic signs and symbols
• Discuss the different types of cartographic symbols.

Agricultural Geography Topics

Agricultural geography focuses on farms, farm households, livelihood concerns, resource, policy and economic issues related to agriculture, fibre, fuel, food production, farming, and more.

• Discuss the new approaches to agricultural geography
• A critical review of crop efficiency and crop productivity in India
• A review of agricultural geography and the political economy approach
• To research the geography of agricultural change – Redundant or revitalised?
• To discuss the relationship between rural development, agriculture and geography
• Discuss the use and benefit of model farms in agricultural geography
• Use of economic and geographical methods of agricultural development – The case of China
• Using the understanding of agricultural crop geography in the United Kingdom as an assessment for agricultural literacy
• A look at the trends and challenges about the future of food and agriculture
• To discuss the importance of agriculture in ensuring food security for the world

Infrastructural Geography Topics

Infrastructural geography has become one of the most prominent branches of geography in recent times, thanks to the growing need to urbanise strategic geographic locations of the world. Here are some infrastructural geography topics for you to ponder over.

• A study of the infrastructures of life in the urban age
• Infrastructural citizenship: Spaces of urban life in Kenya
• Improving transport infrastructure – The persistent challenge of congestion
• Improving transport infrastructure – The life cycle of transport infrastructure
• Comparison between hard and soft infrastructure from the geography perspective
• Discuss the essential elements of urban infrastructure in the Indian sub-continent
• The material of city making – recognising the socio-technical nature of infrastructure in making the city
• Austerity as infrastructure – Exploring how the changing infrastructure of the state becomes a tool to govern social life in highly uneven and unequal ways
• The infrastructure of urban natures
• Social infrastructure and the public life of cities – An examination of the urban public spaces and sociality
• A study of the economic geography of the internet’s infrastructure
• To study the relationship between sustainable development and transportation infrastructure – Emerging challenges and trends.

Ethical Horseracing and Animal Protection Geography Topics

This one might surprise some readers, but ethical horseracing has been one of the most trending and intriguing areas of geography. Here are some ethical horseracing geography topics that might interest you.

• A look at the breeding and living conditions of the horses in Europe
• Horse as a vehicle for gambling – A critical appraisal.
• Using horses for human entertainment in Australia – The merits and demerits.
• An investigation into the reasons why many governments around the world are actively supporting jumps racing
• Horse racing vs greyhound racing – Is there a difference between the two?
• Exploring the horse treatment practices in the USA
• Social pressures in a changing social climate where animal treatment is more important than ever before – The case of the United Arab Emirates.
• The geography of horseracing in Great Britain
• The global horse racing industry – Ethical, environmental, economic and social perspectives
• The role of humans in preventing animal extinction

Glaciology and Glacial Geology Topics

• To study and understand the importance of glaciers for earth nature
• Climate change and its effects on mountain glaciers during 1990-2020 in Northern Pakistan
• Glacial erosional landforms: Origins and significance for palaeoglaciology
• Study the glacial processes and landforms
• Investigate the glacier changes and their relation to climate change
• The ice-age of Himalaya – A study of the glacier advance resulting from temperature change

Geography Topics you Should Avoid

The topic idea can either make or break the academic grade for an essay or a dissertation. You should avoid the following types of topics that;

• Are too broad and lack focus
• Are too narrow, and there is not enough literature available on them
• Do not interest you
• Fall outside the scope of applications of science and technology
• Your supervisor does not approve
• Cannot be addressed without costly primary research

How to write a geography essay?

Here are the steps for writing a geography essay .

• Find relevant information according to your interests.
• Develop the research question that needs to be addressed.
• Make an essay outline with a table of contents for your essay, so you know what needs to be included in your essay.
• Start the introduction to provide a background to the topic you are investigating.
• Write the main body , and provide arguments and statements to base your opinion on.
• End with the conclusion.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to find topic for geography essay.

To find a topic for a geography essay, consider current events, environmental issues, urbanization, natural disasters, climate change, cultural landscapes, or geopolitical conflicts. Research online resources, read articles, and analyze maps to identify engaging and relevant subjects.

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Search the Centre for Economic Performance Website

Economic geography.

Research into regional and urban development, inequalities between places and the location of economic activity.

CEP research explains why some areas to do better than others unpicking the role that education, employment, infrastructure and institutions play in the growth of certain areas and what can be done to improve resilience to economic shocks. From 2008-2015, much of this work was done in collaboration with the Spatial Economics Research Centre (SERC)

Since 2015, the work of SERC has been included within the CEP's Urban programme. Ongoing research includes analyses of what triggers urban decline and how globalisation can amplify the differences between areas within countries.

Key Publications

Search Economic geography Publications

Featured work, why do some regions fail to recover from economic shocks.

Anthony Venables presents research examining regional disparities in the UK, from the 1970s to today. Recorded at CEPR's June Paris Symposium.

Slavery and Britain's industrial revolution

Stephan Heblich, Stephen Redding and Hans-Joachim Voth explore the impact of wealth derived from slavery on the geography of economic development in Britain and the country's industrial revolution.

A tale of two cities (part 2)

The productivity of our largest cities lags the UK average, bucking the global trend for bigger urban areas to be more productive. This report on Greater Manchester, and a twin paper on the Birmingham urban area, provides grounded answers to the difficult question of what would it actually take to achieve a higher-productivity future for these two cities.

Economic geography Publications

Journal article, journal of urban economics: forthcoming, the spatial impacts of a massive rail disinvestment program: the beeching axe.

This paper investigates the reversibility of the effects of transport infrastructure investments, based on a programme that removed much of the rail network in Britain during the mid-20th century. We find that a 10% loss... Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Stephan Heblich and Edward W. Pinchbeck

17 August 2024

Keywords: rail ; infrastructure ; beeching cuts

Cities and the sea level

Construction on low elevation coastal zones is risky for both residents and taxpayers who bail them out. To investigate this construction, we analyze spatially disaggregated data covering the entire US Atlantic and Gulf ... Read more...

Yatang Lin, Thomas K.J. McDermott and Guy Michaels

1 August 2024

Keywords: cities ; climate change ; sea level rise

CEP discussion paper

Identifying agglomeration shadows: long-run evidence from ancient ports.

We examine "agglomeration shadows" that emerge around large cities, which discourage some economic activities in nearby areas. Identifying agglomeration shadows is complicated, however, by endogenous city formation and "... Read more...

Richard Hornbeck, Guy Michaels and Ferdinand Rauch

26 June 2024

Keywords: agglomeration shadow ; urban hierarchy ; new economic geography

CEP election analysis

Spatial disparities in productivity and income.

This briefing looks at the causes and consequences of UK spatial disparities and what, if anything, policy can do to address them.... Read more...

Will Brett-Harding and Henry G. Overman

20 June 2024

Keywords: election 2024 ; economic geography ; productivity ; uk economy ; election2024

CentrePiece article

The economic costs of the failing planning system.

Paul Cheshire began to investigate the economic effects of the UK’s planning system 40 years ago. Here he draws on a recent public lecture – and panel discussion with Stephen Aldridge, Kate Barker and Simon Wolfson – to ... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

Keywords: uk economy ; housing ; planning ; economic geography

Putting quantitative models to the test: An application to Trump's trade war

The primary motivation behind quantitative modeling in international trade and many other fields is to shed light on the economic consequences of policy changes. To help assess and potentially strengthen the credibility ... Read more...

Rodrigo Adao, Arnaud Costinot and Dave Donaldson

7 June 2024

Keywords: international trade ; urban economics ; testing economic models

Centre for Cities (podcast):

City talks: sharing the benefits of a high-tech economy (podcast).

Centre for Cities chief executive Andrew Carter is joined by Professor Neil Lee, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics and author of Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the... Read more...

Keywords: economic geography ; technological change ; podcast

Cool cities: The value of urban trees

Cities are warming faster than their rural surroundings. But the ecosystem support provided by urban forestry is often omitted from climate policies due to the difficulty in assigning to it a credible monetary sum. Lu Ha... Read more...

Lu Han, Stephan Heblich, Christopher Timmins and Yanos Zylberberg

25 April 2024

Keywords: economic geography ; green growth ; climate ; trees

External publication

Labour economics: thinking through labour's economic agenda.

With the Labour Party having vowed to achieve the fastest growth in the G7, the Social Market Foundation has brought together leading economic experts to provide independent analysis of the party's proposed approach - an... Read more...

Timothy Besley, Aveek Bhattacharya, Jagjit Chadha, Paul Cheshire, Neil Lee, Alan Manning, Andrew McNeil, Margarida Bandeira Morais, Henry G. Overman, David Soskice, Anna Valero, Giles Wilkes and Alison Wolf

22 April 2024

Keywords: uk economy ; politics ; labour ; ; economic geography ; green growth ; housing ; ; productivity ; wages ; employment ; schools ; industrial strategy

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Do plural ownership policies matter for local economies.

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino outlines how a new evidence briefing published by the What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth provides guidance for local policymakers on how to think through some of the local economic impacts ... Read more...

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

16 April 2024

Keywords: economic geography ; evidence ;

LSE EUROPP:

What explains the gender ideology gap.

Felipe Carozzi and Andres Gago present evidence from Spain that can provide a partial explanation for a growing ideological gap between young men and women across the world.... Read more...

Felipe Carozzi and Andres Gago

11 April 2024

Keywords: economic geography ; gender gap ;

New opportunities in transport investment for growth?

In February, the government announced the new Local Transport Fund, a package of £4.7bn of spending. Places will be able to spend funds on a range of transport investments, with the aim of improving connectivity within a... Read more...

Will Brett-Harding

28 March 2024

Keywords: economic geography ; transport ; funding ; uk economy

Journal of Regional Science:

Within-city roads and urban growth.

In this paper we study the role of within-city roads layout in fostering city growth. Within-city roads networks have not been studied extensively in economics although they are essential to facilitate human interactions... Read more...

Paul Brandily and Ferdinand Rauch

20 March 2024

Keywords: road layout ; sub&#8208 ; saharan africa ; urban planning ; urbanisation

Regional Studies:

Global production networks meets evolutionary economic geography.

Two of the canonical approaches in regional studies are global production networks (GPNs) and evolutionary economic geography (EEG). Recent geopolitical and economic events have shown the importance of both theories in e... Read more...

8 March 2024

Keywords: global production networks ; global value chains ; relatedness ; evolutionary economic geography ; complexity

LSE Public Policy Review:

Spatial labour market inequality and social protection in the uk.

Spatial inequality in economic outcomes is increasingly seen as a problem for national economies. This paper considers spatial inequality in the UK labour market, its causes, and potential policy solutions. Relative to o... Read more...

Pawel Bukowski, Mark Fransham and Neil Lee

1 March 2024

Keywords: economic geography ; europe ; uk economy ; wages

Making sense of services

Will Brett-Harding outlines a two-step approach for thinking about what high growth potential services look like at the local level.... Read more...

27 February 2024

Keywords: economic geography ; local economic growth ; services

How where you live affects your pay

Tackling inequality between regions within a country has become a political priority across much of the advanced world. Luis Bauluz, Pawel Bukowski, Mark Fransham, Annie Seong Lee, Neil Lee, Margarita Lopez Forero, Filip... Read more...

Luis Bauluz, Pawel Bukowski, Mark Fransham, Annie Seong Lee, Neil Lee, Margarita Lopez Forero, Filip Novokmet and Moritz Schularick

20 February 2024

Keywords: economic geography ; wages ; equality

Ending stagnation

What can be done to address Britain’s relative economic decline over the past decade and a half? The final report of the Economy 2030 Inquiry presents an ambitious strategy for reversing decades of under-investment, by t... Read more...

Keywords: uk economy ; wages ; green growth ; brexit ; social mobility ; employment ; economic geography ; productivity

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Global britain has failed - what next.

The vision of post-Brexit Britain was one of international trade deals that would propel the country into a new era of prosperity. That vision of "Global Britain" is now dead. Thomas Sampson argues that the only viable a... Read more...

Thomas Sampson

16 February 2024

Keywords: economic geography ; globalisation ; uk economy ; brexit ; eu

CEP Insights

Insights: condensed.

The Insights series is an introduction to the work of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP). Each Insight highlights the contribution of CEP researchers to both academic understanding and policymaking in one area of ... Read more...

6 February 2024

Keywords: brexit ; trade ; education ; immigration ; cities ; regional inequality ; spatial disparities ; economic geography ; gender ; labour markets ; wages ; income ; green growth ; growth ; productivity ; wellbeing ; employment ; crime ; social mobility

Trade liberalisation can weaken unions and reduce votes for the left

Intuitively, trade liberalisation should increase the appeal of left-wing parties that offer to protect workers with protectionist policies. Pedro Ogeda, Emanuel Ornelas and Rodrigo Soares use evidence from Brazil to sho... Read more...

Pedro Molina Ogeda, Emanuel Ornelas and Rodrigo R. Soares

4 February 2024

Keywords: globalisation ; economic geography ; politics ; trade

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy :

Local retail prices, product variety, and neighborhood change.

We study how local grocery markets within a city are affected by changes in housing markets. Our empirical strategy exploits a shift in the spatial distribution of construction activity induced by a large-scale, place-ba... Read more...

Fernando Borraz, Felipe Carozzi, Nicolás González-Pampillón and Leandro Zipitria

1 February 2024

Keywords: retail and wholesale trade ; e-commerce ; economic development: urban ; rural ; regional ; and transportation analysis ; housing ; infrastructure ; urban ; rural ; regional ; real estate ; and transportation economics: other demand ; urban ; rural ; regional ; real estate ; and transportation economics: regional migration ; regional labor markets ; population ; neighborhood characteristics ; housing supply and markets ; production analysis and firm location: government policy ;

Neoclassical growth in an interdependent world

The neoclassical growth model remains a crucial reference point for economists thinking about cross-country income dynamics, but it imposes strong assumptions about goods and capital markets. Benny Kleinman, Ernest Liu, ... Read more...

Benny Kleinman, Ernest Liu, Stephen J. Redding and Motohiro Yogo

31 January 2024

Keywords: economic geography ; neoclassical growth ; growth

The state of the UK economy 2024

The state of the UK economy is always an important matter, but it is all the more so in what looks likely to be an election year. This UK in a Changing Europe report takes stock of the UK economy in order to assess how i... Read more...

Arun Advani, David Bailey, Ben Brindle, Simon Burgess, Patrick Dunleavy, Sarah Hall, Stephen Hansaker, Christian A. L. Hilber, Donald Houston, Ethan Ilzetzki, Sandra McNally, Henry G. Overman, Jonathan Portes, Huw Roberts, Thomas Sampson, Andy Summers, Madeleine Sumption, Phil Tomlinson, Tony Wilson and Ben Zaranko

Keywords: brexit ; economic geography ; employment ; green growth ; immigration ; productivity ; schools ; wages ; uk economy ; technological change ; macroeconomics ; inequality ; public services ; tax policy ; trade ; industrial policy

The experience of war shapes communities and future wars

Countries currently involved in active warfare - Ukraine, Russia, and Israel most prominently - have launched intense mobilisation campaigns to expand their armies. This column examines what compels ordinary men and wome... Read more...

Felipe Carozzi, Edward W. Pinchbeck and Luca Repetto

20 January 2024

Keywords: war ; history ; uk economy ; economic geography

LSE Impact:

Dashboards have the power to make complex research accessible to the public and policymakers.

While researchers often point to the relevance of their research, economic models and econometric methods are typically inaccessible to a wider audience. Gabriel Ahlfeldt explains how interactive dashboards represent a u... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt

3 January 2024

Keywords: economic geography ; uk economy ; housing ; property ; index ; price ; real estate

Urban Studies:

Unbundling tenure security and demand for property rights: evidence from urban tanzania.

Rapid urbanisation in sub-Saharan Africa occurs with little land registration, and government-led regularisation schemes often find limited uptake of title deeds by residents. In theory, there could be private and public... Read more...

Martina Manara and Tanner Regan

1 January 2024

Keywords: development ; informality ; property rights reform ; tenure security ; urban africa

Journal of Environmental Psychology: Forthcoming

Working memory and fluid intelligence are differentially related to categories of urban fabric in older adults: results from the berlin aging study.

Urbanization is Globally increasing at a rapid rate but its consequences for mental health, including cognitive functioning, are not well understood. In particular, little is known about the effects of different morpholo... Read more...

Sandra Duzel, Peter Eibich, Jurgen Gallinat, Jan Goebel, Christian Krekel, Simone Kuhn, Ulman Lindenberger, Anna Mascherek and Gert G. Wagner

31 December 2023

Keywords: urban fabric ; levels of urbanicity ; cognition ; berlin aging study ii ; georeferencing data

Urban-biased structural change

Economic activity in high-income countries has shifted towards services and away from manufacturing. But research remains scant on the patterns of structural change within countries across urban and rural areas. Using mi... Read more...

Natalie Chen, Dennis Novy, Carlo Perroni and Horng Chern Wong

24 December 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; structural change ; urban

Corporate landlords are eroding the American dream of homeownership, especially in black neighborhoods

There has been a growing trend for institutional investors to purchase single-family homes and convert them to permanent rental properties. At the same time, homeownership rates for black households have declined on par ... Read more...

Stephen B. Billings and Adam Soliman

18 December 2023

Keywords: housing ; us ; race ; economic geography

Fair employment policies: thinking through local impacts

Will Brett-Harding explains why we should assess the local economic impacts of fair employment policies and why it is important to think carefully about the economic logic and the evidence before pursuing them as a polic... Read more...

11 December 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; fair employment ; local economic growth

The UK has great strengths, but is a decade and a half into a period of stagnation. The toxic combination of slow growth and high inequality was straining the living standards of low- and middle-income Britain well befor... Read more...

4 December 2023

Keywords: economy2030 ; brexit ; economic geography ; employment ; green growth ; productivity ; social mobility ; technological change ; uk economy ; wages

Using firm-level data from France, we document that the shift of economic activity from manufacturing to services over the last few decades has been urban-biased: structural change has been more pronounced in areas with ... Read more...

28 November 2023

Keywords: agglomeration ; cities ; firm sorting ; manufacturing ; productivity ; services ; trade costs

Project Syndicate:

What to do about ukraine's brain drain.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 fuelled migration on a scale unseen since World War II, leaving 15 per cent of the population residing outside the country to this day. When Ukraine eventually gets the chanc... Read more...

Giacomo Anastasia and Tito Boeri

22 November 2023

Keywords: ukraine ; russia ; war ; ; employment ; ; immigration ; human capital ; economic geography

Planning may be a political hot potato but radical reform cannot wait

Planning - largely because of the cruel growth in the unaffordability of housing - has risen up the political agenda. Reforms are urgently needed to allow more homes to be built, but change is notoriously difficult. Ahea... Read more...

15 November 2023

Keywords: uk economy ; housing ; economic geography

The skyscraper revolution: Global economic development and land savings

Tall buildings are central to facilitating sustainable urbanization and growth in cities worldwide. We estimate average elasticities of city population and built area to aggregate city building heights of 0.12 and -0.17,... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Nathaniel Baum-Snow and Remi Jedwab

14 November 2023

Keywords: urban density ; international buildings heights ; skyscrapers ; tall buildings ; sustainable urbanization ; city growth ; commercial real estate ; housing supply ; urban sprawl ; land savings ; housing affordability ; geographical constraints ; environment

Interview with Neil Lee - "If we want to have innovative cities, they have to deliver for everyone"

In an interview with LSE Cities, Neil Lee discusses what's driving anti-metropolitan politics in Europe and how a more inclusive innovation economy could help address it.... Read more...

3 November 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; globalisation ; europe ; wellbeing ; politics

Blog series: Understanding core economic concepts in economic growth

This blog series, aimed primarily at those working in local and central government, provides deep-dives into various components of economic growth, and some key concepts that affect the impact of economic growth policies... Read more...

Henry G. Overman

2 November 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; uk economy ; local economic growth

To what extent did the wealth derived from slavery contribute to Europe's economic growth? Stephan Heblich, Stephen Redding and Hans-Joachim Voth find that slaveholding areas of Britain were less agricultural, closer to ... Read more...

Stephan Heblich, Stephen J. Redding and Hans-Joachim Voth

26 October 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; uk economy ; history ;

LSE Business Review:

Britain can promote private investment and economic growth. here's how.

The UK investment ecosystem needs rewiring across the board to increase firms' desire to invest in productive and sustainable assets, and to enhance their ability to do so. Paul Brandily, Mimosa Distefano, Krishan Shah, ... Read more...

Paul Brandily, Mimosa Distefano, Krishan Shah, Gregory Thwaites and Anna Valero

24 October 2023

Keywords: economy2030 ; employment ; green growth ; productivity ; uk economy ; planning ; pensions ; labour markets ; infrastructure

Understanding capitalisation

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino discusses key concepts to consider when thinking about capitalisation for local economic growth policies.... Read more...

23 October 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; capitalisation

CEP Insights: Places and...

CEP research on cities and regions examines the drivers of spatial disparities - what leads certain parts of the country to be richer and others poorer? It explores the impact on economic development and policies that ma... Read more...

20 October 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; productivity ; skills ; globalisation

Understanding tradable and non-tradable sectors

Helene Donnat discusses what to consider when thinking about tradable and non-tradables in policymaking.... Read more...

Helene Donnat

19 October 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; tradables

Understanding crowding out, displacement, and leakage

Will Brett-Harding discusses what to consider regarding crowding out, displacement and leakage, when thinking about local economic growth policies.... Read more...

10 October 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; displacement ; leakage ; crowding out

New evidence on spatial wage inequality across North America and Western Europe

Spatial inequality has become a key policy concern across much of the advanced world, prompting a spate of government action on the issue in recent years. This column presents evidence showing that, contrary to the popul... Read more...

Keywords: economic geography ; spatial inequality ; income

Industrial policy and the great divergence

We discuss recent work evaluating the role of the government in shaping the economy during the long 19th century, a practice we refer to as industrial policy. We show that states deployed a vast variety of different poli... Read more...

Reka Juhasz and Claudia Steinwender

6 October 2023

Keywords: industrial policy ; first wave of globalization ; industrialization ; infant industry protection ; technology policy ; transport infrastructure ; telegraph ; 19th century ; industrial strategy

Understanding additionality and deadweight

Will Brett-Harding discusses additionality and deadweight, the twin concepts which are essential to assessing policy effectiveness.... Read more...

3 October 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; uk economy

Time for a strategy to boost productivity in Manchester and beyond

The UK has a significant productivity problem and the poor performance of the nation's largest cities outside the capital contribute to this problem. Expert economists set out what change would be needed to set Greater M... Read more...

Paul Brandily, Mike Brewer, Nye Cominetti, Matt Coombes, Adam Corlett, Lindsay Judge, Felicia Odamtten, Henry G. Overman, Cara Pacitti, Gui Rodrigues, Krishan Shah, Paul Swinney and Lalitha Try

2 October 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; manchester ; greater manchester ; uk economy

Economics Observatory:

How can uk policy-makers make homes more affordable.

Housing in the UK has become seriously unaffordable; the problem is likely to get worse and younger people are being hit the hardest. Reforms that could be effective in solving the crisis are considered politically infea... Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber

Keywords: economic geography ; housing ; uk economy

Understanding multipliers

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino discusses why we need to consider multipliers when thinking about local economic growth policies.... Read more...

26 September 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; multipliers

What can house prices tell us about the environmental costs of overhead power lines?

The transition to green energy requires many new electrical power lines to be constructed. In the UK, this construction is a contentious planning and political issue. Steve Gibbons and Cheng Keat Tang show the local cost... Read more...

Stephen Gibbons and Cheng Keat Tang

25 September 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; green growth

Understanding efficiency and equity

Henry Overman explains why we need to consider efficiency and equity when thinking about local economic growth policies.... Read more...

20 September 2023

Keywords: uk economy ; economic geography

Few would disagree that the UK has a significant productivity problem, or fail to recognise that the poor performance of the nation's largest cities outside the capital contribute to that situation. As the Economy 2030 I... Read more...

19 September 2023

Keywords: uk economy ; economy2030 ; economic geography ; productivity

A tale of two cities (part 1)

After the success of the Commonwealth Games in 2022, Birmingham is now in the news for the wrong reasons. Financial difficulties facing the City Council culminated in a formal declaration on 5 September 2023 that Britain... Read more...

14 September 2023

Keywords: economy2030 ; economic geography ; productivity ; growth

Understanding agglomeration

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino explains why considering agglomeration is important for local economic growth policies and what to consider when thinking about agglomeration.... Read more...

Brazil's comparative advantage in soybean production triggered deforestation

Tropical ecosystems house an immense biomass, which makes it imperative to understand how they are affected by technology and trade. Igor Carreira, Francisco Costa and Joao Paulo Pessoa examine the Brazilian rainforest's... Read more...

Igor Carreira, Francisco Costa and Joao Paulo Pessoa

12 September 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; globalisation ; climate ; trade ; environment ; green growth

Public sector relocation: how to think about local impacts

Will Brett-Harding investigates the effects of public sector relocation on local areas that are destinations for the relocated or new public sector activity.... Read more...

11 September 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; public sector ; uk economy

A true housing crisis needs more than post-truth politicians

The UK's housing crisis is particularly acute by international standards. Instead of identifying real solutions, argues Paul Cheshire, policy-makers have offered only rhetorical devices, ineffective local mechanisms, and... Read more...

5 September 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; uk economy ; housing

in Policy Landscape 2023

What are the public policy challenges confronting the UK? What plans do the parties have for addressing them? To what extent are these plans fit for purpose? As Parliament returns from its summer recess, Full Fact and U... Read more...

Keywords: uk economy ; economic geography ; housing

Africa at LSE:

Public disclosure policies don't improve tax collection in uganda.

Public disclosure policies are designed to raise tax compliance where alternative enforcement capacity is limited. But they can also have negative consequences by showcasing the true extent of tax compliance, write Priya... Read more...

Priya Manwaring and Tanner Regan

29 August 2023

Keywords: africa ; tax ; government ; policy ; economic geography

Understanding supply and demand

Helene Donnat explains what supply and demand is and why policymakers need to consider it to design effective policies.... Read more...

Keywords: economic geography ; supply and demand

What are spatial disparities?

Henry Overman explains what spatial disparities are, why we need to consider them when thinking about local economic growth policies and whether we should try to reduce them.... Read more...

22 August 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; spatial disparities ; local economic growth ; inequality

How the scars of past wars continue to shape UK society

Edward Pinchbeck, Felipe Carozzi and Luca Repetto discuss new research exploring how memory of losses from war affects communities and shapes social values. Their findings suggest the impact can reverberate through gener... Read more...

7 August 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; war ; community

Knowledge spillovers from clean innovation. A tradeoff between growth and climate?

Innovation policy faces a tradeoff between growth and climate objectives when the knowledge spillover externality from clean innovation is low compared to other sectors. To make such a comparison, we use patent data to e... Read more...

Ralf Martin and Dennis Verhoeven

12 July 2023

Keywords: innovation ; knowledge spillovers ; clean technology ; innovation policy ; green transition ; net-zero ; patent data ; economic geography ; green growth ; productivity ; technological change ; industrial strategy

CEP occasional paper

The linear algebra of economic geography models.

We provide sufficient statistics for nominal and real wage exposure to productivity shocks in a constant elasticity economic geography model. These exposure measures summarize the first-order general equilibrium elastici... Read more...

Benny Kleinman, Ernest Liu and Stephen J. Redding

11 July 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; trade ; migration

Rebuilding cities in Ukraine

Presuming that Ukraine successfully reclaims most or all of its lost territories from Russian occupation, there will be a political drive to bring refugees back to their hometowns and to rebuild destroyed cities. This co... Read more...

Richard K. Green, J. Vernon Henderson, Matthew E. Kahn, Alex Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy and Andrii Parkhomenko

8 July 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; ukraine ; russia ; ; immigration

Public spaces: key points to keep in mind

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino discusses the local economic benefits and costs of possible schemes regarding the public realm and green spaces.... Read more...

4 July 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; local economy ; public spaces

The supply chain for electric car batteries is changing the world's geopolitics

The rising demand for electric vehicles is changing the geopolitical landscape, as the world pivots away from fossil fuels towards the materials critical to the EV supply chain. As manufacturers and countries race to sec... Read more...

Robert J.R. Elliott, Gavin Harper, Benjamin Jones and Viet Nguyen-Tien

27 June 2023

Keywords: productivity ; technological change ; green growth ; economic geography

Thinking through social infrastructure wider outcomes

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino discusses the indirect effects of social infrastructure on communities, as part of the What works Centre for Local Economic Growth's 'thinking through series' which focuses on how local policymakers... Read more...

22 June 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; social infrastructure ; levelling up

Centre for Cities City Talks:

City talks: what are the signs that the uk is levelling up (podcast).

Henry Overman speaks to Chief Executive Andrew Carter about how to measure the scale of the underperformance of cities in the UK and search for evidence that could point us towards the right solutions, in this podcast ep... Read more...

Andrew Carter and Henry G. Overman

Keywords: economic geography ; spatial disparities ; podcast

Seizing sustainable growth opportunities from tidal stream energy in the UK

This is the decade for managing the immense risks of climate change, and delivery on net zero. That means rapidly increasing the share of renewable sources in our energy mix alongside a step-change in energy and resource... Read more...

Pia Andres, Ralf Martin, Esin Serin, Arjun Shah and Anna Valero

Keywords: green growth ; growth ; policy ; net zero ; technological change ; employment ; economic geography ; uk economy ; industrial strategy

To what extent did the wealth derived from slavery contribute to Europe’s economic growth? Stephan Heblich, Stephen Redding and Hans-Joachim Voth find that slaveholding areas of Britain were less agricultural, closer to ... Read more...

20 June 2023

Keywords: uk economy ; technological change ; economic geography

Stepping up evaluation of active travel

Will Brett Harding discusses increasing active travel and what this means for locally delivered projects, and more generally about plans for determining the benefits of active travel investments.... Read more...

15 June 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; active travel ; local economy

How can we make homes more affordable?

Housing has become unaffordable, the problem is likely to get worse, and the young are hit the hardest. Christian Hilber argues that we face a conundrum: reforms that would be effective are considered politically infeasi... Read more...

24 May 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; housing

Why the government's levelling-up plans need a reality check

The government has made tackling the UK's persistent spatial inequalities one of its top priorities. Yet progress has been slow or absent, because of insufficient investment, an underestimation of the scale of the challe... Read more...

23 May 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; uk economy ; levelling up

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

The local labor market effects of modern manufacturing capital: evidence from france.

Using an event study methodology and comprehensive micro data from the French manufacturing sector, we analyze the local labor market effects of investments in modern manufacturing capital, including modern automation te... Read more...

Philippe Aghion, Celine Antonin, Simon Bunel and Xavier Jaravel

Keywords: firm behavior: empirical analysis ; capital budgeting ; fixed investment and inventory studies ; capacity ; financing policy ; financial risk and risk management ; capital and ownership structure ; value of firms ; goodwill ; labor demand ; industry studies: manufacturing: general ; personnel economics: firm employment decisions ; promotions ; urban ; rural ; regional ; real estate ; and transportation economics: regional migration ; regional labor markets ; population ; neighborhood characteristics

The What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth: some lessons from the first ten years

In the what works centres: lessons and insights from an evidence movement.

What can policy do to increase local economic growth? This is a question that has challenged decision makers and academics for decades. It's also a fundamental question today, when the UK government has made economic gro... Read more...

Danielle Mason, Max Nathan and Henry G. Overman

28 April 2023

Keywords: uk economy ; economic geography ; growth ; policy ; urban

All aboard: The effects of port development

There are large potential gains to improving ports, but space constraints and other costs affect who benefits from port infrastructure, say Cesar Ducruet, Reka Juhasz, David Krisztian Nagy and Claudia Steinwender.... Read more...

César Ducruet, Reka Juhasz, Dávid Krisztián Nagy and Claudia Steinwender

25 April 2023

Keywords: trade ; globalisation ; ports ; infrastructure

What does the evidence say on place-based intervention for net zero?

Will Brett-Harding discusses the existing evidence on place-based intervention for net zero, in light of the global climate crisis and the magnitude of the damage that will, or already has, come with it.... Read more...

21 April 2023

What is levelling up? (video)

Neil Lee explains what levelling up is and how investing in more cities outside of London can help close the socio-economic gap between different areas in the UK.... Read more...

18 April 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; levelling up ; video ; uk economy

How can we make homes more affordable? (Podcast)

In this LSE IQ episode on how we can make homes more affordable, Christian Hilber shares the reasons behind the UK's current housing affordability crisis, explaining the obstacles to building more houses as a way of over... Read more...

4 April 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; uk economy ; housing ; housing crisis ; podcast

Community Wealth Building for local growth and wider outcomes

Community Wealth Building (CWB) is an approach to local economic development which focuses on retaining public spending and economic activity in a local area. Will Brett-Harding discusses evidence on local economic impac... Read more...

3 April 2023

Keywords: economic geography

Thinking through public spaces wider outcomes

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino assesses the local economic impacts of public spaces, exploring the benefits the evidence points towards, and asks what we need to do going forward.... Read more...

28 March 2023

Econometrica:

Dynamic spatial general equilibrium.

We incorporate forward-looking capital accumulation into a dynamic discrete choice model of migration. We characterize the steady-state equilibrium; generalize existing dynamic exact-hat algebra techniques to incorporate... Read more...

17 March 2023

Keywords: spatial dynamics ; economic geography ; trade ; migration ;

Investment Zones and Innovation

In the Spring 2023 budget, the chancellor announced a newly revamped Investment Zones (IZs) programme as part of the UK's push for growth. This is a significantly scaled back version of the programme outlined by the prev... Read more...

Introducing our new logic model guide and checklist

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino outlines what makes a good logic model for a policy, programme or project, used to underpin funding bids and to develop successful local programmes.... Read more...

8 March 2023

Wider outcomes from public procurement

Will Brett-Harding and Anamaria Tibocha-Nino discuss the effects of local public procurement and whether it can deliver additional social, environmental, or economic benefits on top of core goods or services being bought... Read more...

Will Brett-Harding and Anamaria Tibocha-Nino

6 March 2023

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Quantitative urban models: from theory to data.

Economic activity is highly unevenly distributed within cities, as reflected in the concentration of economic functions in specific locations, such as finance in the Square Mile in London. The extent to which this concen... Read more...

Stephen J. Redding

1 March 2023

Keywords: quantitative ; urban ; trade

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management : Forthcoming

Dirty density: air quality and the density of american cities.

We study the effect of urban density on the exposure of city dwellers to air pollution using data from the United States urban system. Exploiting geological features to instrument for density, we find an economically and... Read more...

Felipe Carozzi and Sefi Roth

Keywords: air pollution ; cities ; density ; health

Regional Studies: Forthcoming

Inclusive innovation in cities: from buzzword to policy.

'Inclusive innovation' has become an increasingly important subnational policy agenda. This paper reviews this agenda, critiques its current usage and presents a new framework for how the concept can be applied by city g... Read more...

24 February 2023

Keywords: inclusive growth ; inclusive innovation ; innovation ; urban policy

Commute and thrive

The advent of commuting in 1930s London opened up opportunities to working-class people. Andrew Seltzer and Jonathan Wadsworth show how public transport boosts the labour market.... Read more...

Andrew Seltzer and Jonathan Wadsworth

21 February 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; technological change ; labour market ; uk economy ; wages ; social mobility

Does active travel have local economic benefits?

Active travel involves making journeys by physically active means such as walking and cycling. While the link to emissions is obvious, we know less about the local economic impacts. Anamaria Tibocha-Nino and Will Brett-H... Read more...

15 February 2023

Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution

To what extent the wealth derived from slavery contributed to Europe's economic growth has been a hotly debated question for more than two centuries. Most economists studying the question have looked at national aggregat... Read more...

11 February 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; growth ; industrial revolution

Innovation and accelerators

In the new year speech, the Prime Minister argued "the most powerful plan for sustainable growth is to position the UK to fully benefit from the incredible scientific and technological change the world is seeing". New me... Read more...

8 February 2023

VoxEU Talk:

Slavery and the industrial revolution (podcast).

Did slaveholding accelerate the industrial revolution in Britain? This controversial theory was first argued by Eric Williams almost 80 years ago but has lacked strong supporting evidence - until now. Stephan Heblich and... Read more...

Stephan Heblich and Hans-Joachim Voth

3 February 2023

Keywords: economic geography ; race ; slavery ; industrial revolution ; podcast

Progressive cities: urban-rural polarisation of social values and economic development around the world

In contrast to the conservative values of rural populations, cities are often seen as bulwarks of more tolerant, liberal and progressive values. This urban-rural divide in values has become one of the major fault lines i... Read more...

Neil Lee, Davide Luca, Jonas Stein and Javier Terrero-Davila

2 February 2023

Keywords: cities ; economic development ; modernisation ; progressive values ; urban-rural polarisation

Level best? The levelling up agenda and UK regional inequality

'Levelling up' - a policy agenda focused on reducing regional inequalities - has become the new mantra in British politics. This paper critiques the policy programme from its emergence in 2019 to the publication of the 2... Read more...

Mark Fransham, Max Herbertson, Neil Lee, Margarida Bandeira Morais and Mihaela Pop

30 January 2023

Keywords: cities ; funding ; inequality ; levelling up ; policy ; regions

The economics of cities: from theory to data

25 January 2023

Keywords: cities ; commuting ; transportation ; urban economics

FRBSF Economic Letter:

Supply chain disruptions, trade costs, and labor markets.

Global supply chain disruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic have increased the costs of trade between countries. Given the interconnectedness of the US economy with the rest of the world, higher trade costs can have imp... Read more...

Andres Rodriguez-Clare, Mauricio Ulate and Jose P Vasquez

19 January 2023

Keywords: covid-19 ; economic geography ; trade ; global supply chains

Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science : Forthcoming

Modeling clusters from the ground up: a web data approach.

This paper proposes a new methodological framework to identify economic clusters over space and time. We employ a unique open source dataset of geolocated and archived business webpages and interrogate them using Natural... Read more...

Max Nathan, Christoph Stich and Emmanouil Tranos

1 January 2023

Keywords: clusters ; business ; cities ; technology industry ; machine learning ;

Vox Ukraine:

"what about the economy": vernon henderson on the challenges of ukraine's recovery (podcast).

Yulia Mincheva, the Analytics Society at VoxUkraine, and J. Vernon Henderson discuss how to rebuild destroyed cities and create conditions for their repopulation in this podcast, "What about the economy?"... Read more...

J. Vernon Henderson and Julia Mincheva

20 December 2022

Keywords: ukraine ; economic geography ; globalisation ; podcast

Investments Zones can drive innovation if we learn from past mistakes

A key part of the previous government's plan for growth and currently being reformulated, Investment Zones have for decades been a policy aimed at delivering regional economic development, or levelling-up. Drawing on evi... Read more...

Max Herbertson and Neil Lee

13 December 2022

Keywords: economic geography ; uk economy ; productivity ; innovation ;

The geography of structural transformation: effects on inequality and mobility

The interplay between structural transformation in the aggregate and local economies is key to understanding spatial inequality and worker mobility. This paper develops a dynamic overlapping generations model of economic... Read more...

Kohei Takeda

12 December 2022

Keywords: structural transformation ; upward mobility ; labour mobility ; economic geography

Accelerating urban economic growth in Ukraine

In rebuilding ukraine: principles and policies.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of what Ukraine should become after the war and what tools policymakers can use to fulfill these goals. The leitmotif of this book is clear: reconstruction is not about rebuildin... Read more...

7 December 2022

Keywords: economic geography ; globalisation ; ukraine ; russia

Housing policy and affordable housing

In oxford research encyclopedia of economics and finance.

Lack of affordable housing is a growing and often primary policy concern in cities throughout the world. The main underlying cause for the "affordability crisis," which has been mounting for decades, is a combination of ... Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber and Olivier Schöni

22 November 2022

Keywords: housing policy ; housing ; affordability ; affordable housing ; supply constraints ; land use controls ; housing subsidies ; public housing ; social housing ; rent control ; urban

Stagnation nation

Even before the cost of living crisis, a toxic combination of slow growth and high inequality was threatening UK living standards, particularly for families on low and middle incomes. The Economy 2030 Inquiry is examinin... Read more...

20 October 2022

Keywords: economy2030 ; brexit ; covid-19 ; economic geography ; employment ; green growth ; productivity ; social mobility ; uk economy ; wages ; technological change ; inequality ; net zero ;

Policies for affordable housing: options and obstacles

The crisis of housing affordability has been mounting for decades, driven by growing demand for properties in desirable areas where supply is limited. Numerous policies have been enacted across countries, but many are in... Read more...

Keywords: economic geography ; housing ; policy ; affordable housing ; supply constraints ; land use controls ; housing subsidies ; public housing ; social housing ; rent control ; inequality

Working from home around the world

The Covid-19 pandemic triggered a surge in working from home. This big shift has endured and is likely to continue, even after the pandemic. This column reports that employees value the option to work from home 2-3 days ... Read more...

Cevat Giray Aksoy, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Mathias Dolls and Pablo Zarate

8 October 2022

Keywords: productivity ; economic geography ; employment

CEPR & VideoVox Economics:

Why do some regions fail to recover from economic shocks (video).

Recorded at CEPR's June Paris Symposium, Tony Venables presents his research on those regional disparities in the UK which originated in the 1970s through negative trade and technology shocks and whose long run consequen... Read more...

Anthony J. Venables

5 October 2022

Keywords: economic geography ; uk economy ; employment ; technological change ; wages

The Conversation:

Research into 1930s commuting in london shows how public transport boosts the labour market.

An argument to justify public transport closures has often been lack of profitability for the service provider. However, Andrew J. Seltzer and Jonathan Wadsworth find that such discussions often miss much of the full val... Read more...

27 September 2022

Keywords: economic geography ; employment ; uk economy

The G7 plan for a price cap on Russian oil: Views of leading economists

To limit the funding of Russia's continued aggravation towards Ukraine and its subsequent impact on soaring energy prices, the G7 countries plan to impose a price cap on purchases of Russian oil and related products. Man... Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

Keywords: economic geography ; price caps ; ukraine ; russia

Investment zones and the problem of displacement

In September 2022, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng set out plans for 'Investment Zones' as the part of the government's renewed focus on growth. A crucial question around area based initiatives is the extent to which growth in... Read more...

26 September 2022

Responsible sourcing? Theory and evidence from Costa Rica

The authors investigate whether responsible sourcing policies implemented by multinational enterprises for their suppliers have impacts on the ground and, if they do, what these mean for firms and workers in the host cou... Read more...

Alonso Alfaro-Urena, Benjamin Faber, Cecile Gaubert, Isabela Manelici and Jose P Vasquez

23 September 2022

Keywords: economic geography ; global value chains ; wellbeing

The Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy:

Trade policy, regional disparities, and inclusive growth.

Places matter to people. For many people, the place where they grow up will become the place where they live and work. Many countries experience regional disparities in economic performance that are profound and persiste... Read more...

2 September 2022

Keywords: economic geography ; levelling up ; uk economy ; trade

Lessons from a robust evaluation of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out scheme

Eat Out to Help Out had a limited effect on footfall and recruitment. Supporting businesses in any context (Covid-19, energy crisis, etc.) needs consideration of effective mechanisms for encouraging programme take-up and... Read more...

Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim

Keywords: economic geography ; covid-19 ; uk economy ; eat out to help out

Applied Energy:

Optimising the geospatial configuration of a future lithium-ion battery recycling industry in the transition to electric vehicles and a circular economy.

Rapid electrification of the transport system will generate substantial volumes of Lithium-ion-battery (LiB) waste as batteries reach their end-of-life. Much attention focuses on the recycling processes, neglecting a bro... Read more...

Paul A. Anderson, Qiang Dai, Robert J.R. Elliott, Gavin Harper and Viet Nguyen-Tien

1 September 2022

Keywords: technological change ; green growth ; economic geography ; electric vehicles ; circular economy ; supply chain ; transition

Economic Geography:

Creative clusters and creative multipliers: evidence from uk cities.

Economic geographers have paid much attention to the cultural and creative industries, both for their propensity to cluster in urban settings, and their potential to drive urban economic development. However, evidence on... Read more...

Diana Gutierrez-Posada, Tasos Kitsos, Max Nathan and Massimiliano Nuccio

28 July 2022

Keywords: creative industries ; local multipliers ; cities ; local economic development

The Overview:

Has the pandemic changed the workplace forever (podcast).

Millions of US workers are quitting or changing jobs in an ongoing trend dubbed the Great Resignation. With job vacancies rising to record highs on both sides of the Atlantic, is the UK also facing a resignations surge? ... Read more...

Jonathan Wadsworth

27 July 2022

Keywords: economic geography ; covid-19 ; employment ; uk economy ; podcast

UCLA Housing Voice:

Skyscrapers with gabriel ahlfeldt (podcast).

Skyscrapers! We can't help but find them fascinating. Some cities are full of skyscrapers, and others have none. Developers built a 70-story tower on that parcel, but the proposed building just down the street is only 30... Read more...

Keywords: urban ; skyscrapers ; housing ; podcast

Stagnation nation: navigating a route to a fairer and more prosperous Britain

The UK has great strengths, but is over a decade into a period of stagnation. The toxic combination of slow growth and high inequality was posing challenges for low-to-middle income Britain's living standards even before... Read more...

13 July 2022

VoxTalks Economics:

Levelling up europe's left-behind places (podcast).

Recorded live at CEPR Paris Symposium 2022: Inequality isn't just between individuals, but between regions too. Henry Overman explains to Tim Phillips why these disparities exist, why they are so persistent, and whether ... Read more...

8 July 2022

Keywords: economic geography ; uk economy ; inequality ; poverty and income inequality ; welfare state ; podcast

The research university, invention and industry: evidence from German history

We examine the role of universities in knowledge production and industrial change using historical evidence. Political shocks led to a profound pro-science shift in German universities around 1800. To study the consequen... Read more...

Jeremiah Dittmar and Ralph R. Meisenzahl

30 June 2022

Keywords: industrialization ; invention ; universities ; cities

What would it take to level up the UK?

The government's levelling up agenda seeks to reduce disparities across the UK. Policies to boost economic performance will need to attract workers and firms away from London and the South East and improve opportunities ... Read more...

Henry G. Overman and Helen Simpson

27 June 2022

Keywords: economic geography ; social mobility ; uk economy ; levelling up ; equality ; spatial disparity ; labour markets ; policy

The economics of levelling up

There is an economic tension at the heart of the government’s plans for 'levelling up' the UK, according to CEP's research director Henry Overman. He argues that getting serious about helping people to access good job op... Read more...

21 June 2022

Keywords: social mobility ; uk economy ; policy ; levelling up ; economic geography ; equality

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

Introduction to the special issue: "urban economics and history".

Read more...

Laurent Gobillon and Stephan Heblich

Keywords: urban economics

History and urban economics

This article reviews recent literature using insights from history to answer central questions in urban economics. This area of research has seen rapid growth in the past decade, thanks to new technologies that have made... Read more...

Walker Hanlon and Stephan Heblich

Keywords: economic history ; growth ; review ; urban economics ; urbanization

Journal of Urban Economics:

The economics of skyscrapers: a synthesis.

We document that skyscraper growth since the end of the 19th century has been driven by a reduction in the cost of height, increasing urbanization, and rising incomes. These stylized facts guide us in developing a compet... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Jason Barr

Keywords: density ; economics ; height regulations ; history ; skyscraper ; skyscrapers ; urbanization

The Economic Journal:

Gravity and heterogeneous trade cost elasticities.

How do trade costs affect international trade? This paper offers a new approach. We rely on a flexible gravity equation that predicts variable trade cost elasticities, both across and within country pairs. We apply this ... Read more...

Natalie Chen and Dennis Novy

Keywords: free trade agreements ;  gravity equation ;  trade costs ; economic geography

Viewing urban spatial history from tall buildings

Micro-geographic data capturing the spatial distribution of economic activity within cities in history are difficult to access. This paper discusses how tall and durable buildings can be exploited as a source of "big dat... Read more...

Keywords: density ; economics ; history ; skyscrapers ; urban

Journal of Human Resources:

The urban wage premium in imperfect labor markets.

Using administrative data for West Germany, this paper investigates whether part of the urban wage premium stems from fierce competition in thick labour markets. We first establish that employers possess less wage-settin... Read more...

Boris Hirsch, Elke J. Jahn, Alan Manning and Michael Oberfichtner

1 April 2022

Keywords: urban wage premium ; imperfect labour markets ; monopsony ; search frictions

Wheeler Institute for Business and Development, London Business School:

Harnessing the potential of urbanisation in africa: land and housing policy.

Tanner Regan examines the potential for urban planning to encourage public and private investment in land and infrastructure.... Read more...

Tanner Regan

29 March 2022

Keywords: economic geography ; africa ; investment ; infrastructure ; policy

The Urban Economics of Superdiversity

In the oxford handbook of superdiversity.

This chapter examines the economic impacts of superdiversity in theory and practice, drawing on the experience of the United Kingdom in the early 2000s. Superdiversity has a largely urban footprint, reflecting the afford... Read more...

18 March 2022

Keywords: superdiversity ; cities ; economics ; productivity ; quantification

Economic consequences of Russia's invasion of Ukraine: views of leading economists

Romesh Vaitilingam reports on the views of leading economists concerning the likely economic consequences of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the responses by the international community.... Read more...

10 March 2022

Keywords: economic geography ; wellbeing ; russia ; ukraine ; trade

Sanctions and the targeting of 'elite' interests: the effectiveness of targeting in the case of Iran

The targeting of elite interests has been at the centre of recent sanctions policies, and will be a major strategic concern as the world responds to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Mirko Draca, Jason Garred, and Nele Wa... Read more...

Mirko Draca, Jason Garred and Nele Warrinnier

4 March 2022

Keywords: economic geography ; trade ; russia ; ukraine ; iran ; sanction

How might Scottish independence affect the costs of international trade?

If Scotland were to become an independent country, there would be a new international border with the rest of the UK. Thomas Sampson considers how additional costs that are inevitably created by borders would affect trad... Read more...

18 February 2022

Keywords: brexit ; economic geography ; uk economy ; trade ; scotland ; independence

Spatial disparities across labour markets

Spatial inequalities in the UK are profound and persistent. In 2019, average wages in London were 60% higher than those in Scarborough and Grimsby. Employment rates ranged from 66% in Skegness and Louth to 90% in Harroga... Read more...

Henry G. Overman and Xiaowei Xu

2 February 2022

Keywords: levelling up ; economic geography ; uk ; policy ; equality ; social mobility ; education and skills

LSE Politics and Policy:

'levelling-up': the government's plans aren't enough to promote economic growth and tackle inequality.

The government's levelling-up plan dodges the hard choices says Henry Overman. Countering the economic forces behind the UK's spatial disparities requires addressing multiple barriers and allowing differing approaches - ... Read more...

Keywords: economic geography ; uk economy ; equality ; policy

Incubators, accelerators and urban economic development

We combine theory and evidence on incubator and accelerator programmes and their effects on urban economic development. These structured co-working programmes have grown rapidly. However, a rich descriptive literature re... Read more...

Margarida Madaleno, Max Nathan, Henry G. Overman and Sevrin Waights

1 February 2022

Keywords: accelerators ; clusters ; evaluation ; incubators ; urban economic development

Working from home and corporate real estate

As remote working became more common during Covid-19, Antonin Bergeaud, Jean Benoit Eymeoud, Thomas Garcia and Dorian Henricot examine how corporate real-estate market participants adjusted to the growth of teleworking i... Read more...

Antonin Bergeaud, Jean Benoit Eymeoud, Thomas Garcia and Dorian Henricot

18 January 2022

Keywords: covid-19 ; economic geography ; technological change ; working from home ; labour market ; corporate real estate ; office space ; france

Health and Place:

Income-related health inequality in urban china (1991-2015): the role of homeownership and housing conditions.

Unprecedented economic growth has been experienced over the several decades worldwide, but such rapid economic growth wasn't accompanied by equally-substantial improvement in health, especially health inequalities betwee... Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Conchita D'Ambrosio, Lanlin Ding and Peng Nie

1 January 2022

Keywords: decomposition ; homeownership ; housing conditions ; income-related health inequality ; urban china ; wellbeing

Cambridge Journal of Economics:

Profitability of small- and medium-sized enterprises in marshall’s time: sector and spatial heterogeneity in the nineteenth century.

New data on profit heterogeneity of small- and medium-sized firms for 1861–81 in England and Wales are used to reinterpret Marshall's contemporary insights. Profit level differences are chiefly explained by location, mai... Read more...

Robert J Bennett, Piero Montebruno, Harry Smith and Carry van Lieshout

Keywords: census ; employers ; entrepreneurship ; small businesses ; economic geography

Urban Studies: Forthcoming

The city and the virus.

Cities around the world are the epicentres of the coronavirus pandemic: both in the first wave, as the disease spread from East Asia, and now, as many countries enter a third wave of infections. These spatial patterns ar... Read more...

17 December 2021

Keywords: cities ; coronavirus ; inequalities ; labour markets ; urban governance

Land Economics:

Valuing the environmental benefits of canals and canal restoration using house prices.

This article values the environmental benefits of historic, navigable canals using property values. We improve on standard methods by controlling for microgeographic fixed effects and applying a difference-in-differences... Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Cong Peng and Cheng Keat Tang

1 November 2021

Keywords: canals ; waterways ; house prices ; environment ; valuation ; cities

Land Economics: Forthcoming

Urban land use fragmentation and human wellbeing.

We study how land use fragmentation affects the life satisfaction of city dwellers. To this end, we calculate fragmentation metrics based on exact geographical coordinates of land use from the European Urban Atlas and of... Read more...

Christine Bertram, Jan Goebel, Christian Krekel and Katrin Rehdanz

Keywords: urban land use ; urban land use fragmentation ; subjective wellbeing ; life satisfaction ; spatial analysis ; soep ; gis

Pandemic shock and economic divergence: political economy before and after the black death

We document how the Black Death activated politics and led to economic divergence within Europe. Before the pandemic, economic development was similar in Eastern and Western German cities despite greater political fragme... Read more...

Luis Bosshart and Jeremiah Dittmar

22 October 2021

Keywords: institutions ; political economy ; structural change ; cities ; growth

Rising sea levels and the future of coastal cities

Despite the higher susceptibility to floods and a growing climate crisis, more than 10% of the world's population lives in low-elevation coastal zones - and that share is increasing. Guy Michaels and colleagues present a... Read more...

Guy Michaels

15 October 2021

Keywords: economic geography ; climate ; climate change ; housing ; inequality ; equality ; cities ; sea level rise

Landscape and Urban Planning:

Urban green is more than the absence of city: structural and functional neural basis of urbanicity and green space in the neighbourhood of older adults.

The relationship between urbanization, the brain, and human mental health is subject to intensive debate in the current scientific literature. Particularly, since mood and anxiety disorders as well as schizophrenia are k... Read more...

Sandra Duzel, Peter Eibich, Jurgen Gallinat, Jan Goebel, Jens Kolbe, Christian Krekel, Simone Kuhn, Ulman Lindenberger, Anna Mascherek and Gert G. Wagner

1 October 2021

Keywords: brain structure ; mri ; urban fabric ; urban green ; urbanicity

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Of mice and merchants: connectedness and the location of economic activity in the iron age.

We study the causal relationship between geographic connectedness and development using one of the earliest massive trade expansions: the first systematic crossing of open seas in the Mediterranean during the time of the... Read more...

Jan David Bakker, Stephan Maurer, Jörn-Steffen Pischke and Ferdinand Rauch

Keywords: urbanization ; locational fundamentals ; trade

Suburbanization in the USA, 1970-2010

The second half of the 20th century saw large-scale suburbanization in the USA, with the median share of residents who work in the county where they live falling from 87% to 71% between 1970 and 2000. We introduce a new ... Read more...

19 August 2021

Keywords: commuting ; numerical model ; residential location ; suburbanization ; urban history ; workplace ; united states

Cities and regions

Economic prosperity is very unevenly distributed across space. What causes some places to be richer and some poorer? Why do these spatial disparities matter - and what can policy do to reduce them? Economists studying ur... Read more...

10 August 2021

Keywords: insights ; economic geography ; cities ; regions ; spatial disparities

Consumer city: evidence from smartphone data

Traditional theories emphasise production decisions and the commuting costs of workers in shaping the spatial concentration of economic activity in cities. However, much of urban travel is related to consumption of non-t... Read more...

Yuhei Miyauchi, Kentaro Nakajima and Stephen J. Redding

4 August 2021

Keywords: economic geography ; technological change ; cities ; transport ; consumerism ; labour markets

We develop a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model with forward-looking investment and migration decisions. We characterize analytically the transition path of the spatial distribution of economic activity in respons... Read more...

28 July 2021

Keywords: spatial dynamics ; economic geography ; trade ; migration

CEP Covid-19 analysis

City of dreams no more, a year on: worklessness and active labour market policies in urban india.

This report provides key findings from a new field survey to assess the long-term impact of Covid-19 on urban workers in low-income areas of India. The survey took place during February and March 2021, just before the s... Read more...

Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli

2 July 2021

Keywords: covid-19 ; urban india ; unemployment

Journal of Political Economy:

Are bigger banks better firm-level evidence from germany.

The effects of large banks on the real economy are theoretically ambiguous and politically controversial. I identify quasi-exogenous increases in bank size in postwar Germany. I show that firms did not grow faster after ... Read more...

Kilian Huber

1 July 2021

Keywords: bank regulation ;  big banks ;  bank size ;  economic growth ;  brexit ;  economic geography ;  employment ;  globalisation ;  productivity ;  technological change

Economics Letters:

Gravity model estimates of the spatial determinants of trade, migration, and trade-and-migration policies.

Using a gravity model, we explore the effects of distance and borders on trade, migration, and trade-and-migration policies and document three key differences between trade and migration patterns in otherwise equivalent ... Read more...

Rebecca Freeman and John Lewis

Keywords: economic geography ; immigration ; distance puzzle ; freedom-of-movement agreements ; globalization ; migration ; regional trade agreements ; gravity estimates

Planning Ahead for Better Neighborhoods: Long-Run Evidence from Tanzania

Africa’s demand for urban housing is soaring, even as it faces a proliferation of slums. In this setting, can modest infrastructure investments in greenfield areas where people subsequently build their own houses facilit... Read more...

Neeraj Baruah, Amanda Dahlstrand, Guy Michaels, Dzhamilya Nigmatulina, Ferdinand Rauch and Tanner Regan

Keywords: urban economics ; economic development ; slums ; africa

Reflections on struggling high streets

Henry Overman reflects on the findings from the What Works Centre's Recovery Workshop focusing on the British high street, looking at how an economic recovery from the pandemic focused on policy may best help our high st... Read more...

19 June 2021

Keywords: covid-19 ; economic geography ; trade ; growth ; policy ; business

State capacity and development clusters

The determinants of economic development have been debated for many years. However, some of these determinants have been hard to measure internationally. Tim Besley, Chris Dann and Torsten Persson review evidence from 25... Read more...

Timothy Besley, Chris Dann and Torsten Persson

18 June 2021

Keywords: economic geography ; trade ; development ; conflict ; institutions ; development ; politics ;

UK house prices in Covid-19 times

The pandemic lead to increased demand for bigger homes and gardens. With housing supply limited by strict UK planning regulations and the market propped up by a stamp duty waiver and the furlough scheme, prices of detach... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Olivier Schöni

15 June 2021

Keywords: covid-19 ; housing ; house prices ; policy ; economic geography

Grantham Institute blogs:

The answer to housing's stubborn carbon emissions problem: green offsets.

Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber propose 'green offsets' to reduce property taxes in a way that is strictly scaled to energy efficiency, as a simple intervention to address the UK's urgent need to reduce its residentia... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Christian A. L. Hilber

7 June 2021

Keywords: urban ; tax ; housing ; environment ;

Pancakes to pyramids: city form to promote sustainable growth (English)

Towns and cities are economic and social microcosms in which large numbers of people and firms interact. These interactions largely shape how a city looks, how it functions, and how it grows. But how exactly does this ma... Read more...

Somik V. Lall, Mathilde Sylvie Maria Lebrand, Hogeun Park, Daniel M. Sturm and Anthony J. Venables

2 June 2021

Keywords: growth ; economic geography ; environment ; cities ; urban

Suburbanization in the United States 1970-2010

The second half of the twentieth century saw large-scale suburbanization in the United States, with the median share of residents who work in the same county where they live falling from 87 to 71 percent between 1970 and... Read more...

19 May 2021

Keywords: economic geography ; suburbanization ; transportation

LSE Research for the World:

Government urban regeneration initiative failed to improve britain's most deprived areas.

In 1994, John Major's Conservative government launched an initiative to improve a range of societal issues through regeneration. The Single Regeneration Budget ran for nearly a decade, but failed to create opportunities ... Read more...

Keywords: economic geography ; social mobility ; regeneration ; growth ; policy

Why housing is built in flood-prone coastal areas

Despite the higher susceptibility to floods and a growing climate crisis, more than 10% of the world's population live in low-elevation coastal zones, and that percentage is growing. Yatang Lin, Thomas McDermott and Guy ... Read more...

22 April 2021

Keywords: economic geography ; urban ; enivronment

Construction on low elevation coastal zones is risky for both residents and taxpayers who bail them out, especially when sea levels are rising. We study this construction using spatially disaggregated data on the US Atla... Read more...

13 April 2021

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

The persistent consequences of adverse shocks: how the 1970s shaped uk regional inequality.

The economic shocks experienced by the UK economy in the 1970s brought major changes in the spatial distribution of employment rates in the UK. This paper traces the long-run implications of these changes, suggesting tha... Read more...

Patricia Rice and Anthony J. Venables

5 April 2021

Keywords: uk economy ; economic geography ; employment

LSE Covid-19:

Why central london has seen the biggest rises in house prices, despite covid.

As many predicted, the pandemic led to a demand for bigger homes and gardens. But with supply limited by Britain's strict planning regulations, and the market propped up by a stamp duty waiver and the furlough scheme, pr... Read more...

31 March 2021

Keywords: covid-19 ; economic geography ; housing market ; housing ; houses ; prices

Business History:

Changes in victorian entrepreneurship in england and wales 1851-1911: methodology and business population estimates.

The full population of England and Wales employers and own-account business proprietors is estimated using population censuses 1851–1911. The main contribution of the article is a method of mixed single imputation to ove... Read more...

30 March 2021

Keywords: census ; employers ; entrepreneurship ; self-employment ; small businesses ; economic geography

Rebuilding Macroeconomics:

Understanding educational progression at the local level: portsmouth, the northern city on the south coast.

Understanding regional inequalities is likely to be key to understanding the UK's overall macroeconomic performance. In this article, Jo Blanden, Hector Espinoza, Sandra McNally and Guglielmo Ventura analyse the educatio... Read more...

Jo Blanden, Hector Espinoza, Sandra McNally and Guglielmo Ventura

25 March 2021

Keywords: economic geography ; schools ; education ; equality ; policy

The local economic impacts of regeneration projects: Evidence from UK's single regeneration budget

Many governments aim to improve the labour market outcomes of people living in deprived areas through "place-making" initiatives. Economists are often sceptical about the effectiveness of such policies, but empirical evi... Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Henry G. Overman and Matti Sarvimäki

1 March 2021

Keywords: employment ; neighbourhoods ; regeneration ; single regeneration budget ; urban policy

The impact of public employment: Evidence from Bonn

This paper evaluates the impact of changes in public employment on private sector activity using the creation of the new West German government in Bonn in the wake of the Second World War as a source of exogenous variati... Read more...

Sascha O. Becker, Stephan Heblich and Daniel M. Sturm

Keywords: economic geography ; german division ; place-based policies ; public employment

Lockdown and the social life of big cities

The effects of Covid-19 on the social lives of city dwellers - being able to go to the pub, restaurants and theatre - may be more relevant for the future of cities than its impact on work. That's the implication of a tho... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel

Keywords: covid-19 ; geography ; economic geography ; cities ; employment ;

Will coronavirus cause a big city exodus?

Big cities thrive because of the economic and social benefits of proximity – but proximity also helps to spread Covid-19. Does this mean an end to the urban revival of recent years – or do vaccines herald a return to nor... Read more...

Max Nathan and Henry G. Overman

Keywords: covid-19 ; economic geography ; housing markets ; innovation ; labour

Consumption access and agglomeration: evidence from smartphone data

We provide new theory and evidence on the role of consumption access in understanding the agglomeration of economic activity. We combine smartphone data that records user location every 5 minutes of the day with economic... Read more...

18 February 2021

Keywords: agglomeration ; urbanization ; transportation

LSE US Centre:

Trade protection along supply chains: how antidumping measures against china hurt downstream industries.

Production processes are often no longer confined to a single country; supply chains can be fragmented across great distances. By contrast, tariffs are often used by individual countries to protect certain industries. In... Read more...

Chad Bown, Paola Conconi, Aksel Erbahar and Lorenzo Trimarchi

10 February 2021

Keywords: economic geography ; supply chains ; usa ; china ; policy ; tax ; production ; employment ; wages ; investment ; sales ; trade

Bloomberg Stephanomics Podcasts:

The economic cost of covid-19's mental health crisis.

Richard Layard talks about why the coronavirus should make us rethink how we treat mental illness, how "building back better" should mean services rather than roads and railways, and why money really doesn't make us happ... Read more...

Richard Layard

13 January 2021

Keywords: covid-19 ; wellbeing ; policy ; public policy ; infrastructure

Quantifying the externalities of renewable energy plants using wellbeing data: the case of biogas

Although there is strong support for renewable energy plants, they are often met with local resistance. We quantify the externalities of renewable energy plants using well-being data. We focus on the example of biogas, o... Read more...

Christian Krekel, Julia Rechlitz, Johannes Rode and Alexander Zerrahn

16 December 2020

Keywords: renewables ; biogas ; externalities ; social acceptance ; wellbeing ; spatial analysis ; economic geography

Lockdown shows us it is not work that attracts us to big cities - but the social life

Covid-19's effect on the social lives of city dwellers - being able to meet at the pub, restaurants or theatre - may be more relevant for the future of cities than its impact on work, write Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald,... Read more...

11 December 2020

Quality of life in a dynamic spatial model

We develop a dynamic spatial model in which heterogeneous workers are imperfectly mobile and forward-looking and yet all structural fundamentals can be inverted without assuming that the economy is in a stationary spatia... Read more...

10 December 2020

Keywords: covid-19 ; dynamic ; housing ; migration ; rents ; pollution ; productivity ; spatial equilibrium ; quality of life ; wages ; welfare ; economic geography ; productivity ; wages ; wellbeing

The effects of large banks on the real economy are theoretically ambiguous and politically controversial. I identify quasi-exogenous increases in bank size in post-war Germany. I show that firms did not grow faster after... Read more...

9 December 2020

Keywords: bank regulation ; big banks ; bank size ; economic growth ; brexit ; economic geography ; employment ; globalisation ; productivity ; technological change

All aboard: the effects of port development

Seaports facilitate the fast flow of goods across space, but ports also entail local costs borne by host cities. We use the introduction of containerized shipping to explore the effects of port development. At the local ... Read more...

César Ducruet, Réka Juhász, Dávid Krisztián Nagy and Claudia Steinwender

8 December 2020

Keywords: ports ; containerization ; quantitative economic geography ; endogenous trade costs

In brief... Economics of skyscrapers

Many tall buildings appear to be out of scale given contemporary perceptions. But according to Gabriel Ahlfeldt and Jason Barr, the vast majority have a solid economic case for their construction.... Read more...

2 November 2020

Keywords: density ; economics ; history ; skyscraper ; urban ; cities

In brief... City of dreams no more: Covid-19 in urban India

The pandemic has decimated livelihoods in urban India and created a new underclass of workers who are being pushed into poverty. A CEP report by Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli calls for a national w... Read more...

Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli

Keywords: india ; urban workers ; cities ; growth ; covid-19

The impact of public employment: evidence from West Germany's post-war capital Bonn

Raising the level of public employment is a frequently used policy instrument to support economically lagging regions. This column evaluates the impact of changes in public employment on private sector activity using the... Read more...

1 November 2020

Keywords: economic geography ; public employment ; private sector ; west germany ; bonn ; spillovers ; synthetic control

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The making of the modern metropolis: evidence from london.

Using newly constructed spatially disaggregated data for London from 1801 to 1921, we show that the invention of the steam railway led to the first large-scale separation of workplace and residence. We show that a class ... Read more...

Stephan Heblich, Stephen J. Redding and Daniel M. Sturm

Keywords: economic geography ; transportation ; housing ; infrastructure ; agglomeration ; urbanization

The use of designer reputation to build tall in London

Height exemptions are made easier when a world-famous architect is involved, but the process carries hidden costs, writes Paul Cheshire.... Read more...

27 October 2020

Keywords: economic geography ; urban

Place-based policies and spatial disparities across European cities

Spatial disparities in income levels and worklessness in the European Union are profound, persistent and may be widening. We describe disparities across metropolitan regions and discuss theories and empirical evidence th... Read more...

Maximilian v. Ehrlich and Henry G. Overman

12 October 2020

Keywords: place based policy ; cities ; european union

Transport infrastructure expenditure: while there is no strong evidence of significant regional differences, the data available is problematic

The UK government uses a Value for Money framework to help allocate infrastructure expenditure. At the core of this is a benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR), calculated using a set of established monetised impacts and costs. Yet... Read more...

8 October 2020

Keywords: economic geography ; inequality ; infrastructure

Prime locations

We harness big data to detect prime locations - large clusters of knowledge-based tradable services - in 125 global cities and track changes in the within-city geography of prime service jobs over a century. Historically... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Thilo N. H. Albers and Kristian Behrens

5 October 2020

Keywords: prime services ; internal city structure ; agent-based model ; multiple equilibria and path dependence ; transport networks ; cities ; economic geography

The crisis and job guarantees in urban India

This paper uses a new field survey of low-wage areas of urban India to show that employment and earnings were decimated by the lockdown resulting from the Covid-19 crisis. It examines workers’ desire for a job guarantee ... Read more...

Swati Dhingra and Stephen Machin

30 September 2020

Keywords: job guarantee ; india ; urban labour markets ; job vignettes ; covid-19

Benefits, costs, and 'levelling up'

Henry Overman examines how transport infrastructure can play an important role in the economic performance of national and local economies. Reducing transport costs for businesses and commuters, improves access to market... Read more...

25 September 2020

Keywords: economic geography ; infrastructure ;

Big cities thrive because of the economic and social benefits of proximity - but proximity also helps to spread Covid-19. Does this mean an end to the big city revival of recent years? Much will depend on how quickly we ... Read more...

Matthew Clancy, Diane Coyle, Jonathan Dingel, Elena Magrini, Philip McCann, Max Nathan, Henry G. Overman and Helen Simpson

22 September 2020

Keywords: covid-19 ; urban ; economic geography ; productivity

Land tenure and land-use in a developing city: A quantitative spatial model applied to Kampala, Uganda

Land rights and tenure systems are an important factor behind poor housing and inefficient land-use in developing country cities. In Kampala, Uganda, four systems of land tenure coexist, allowing a detailed study of the ... Read more...

Julia Bird and Anthony J. Venables

1 September 2020

Keywords: land-tenure ; land-use ; quantitative spatial model ; uganda ; urban

City of dreams no more: the impact of Covid-19 on urban workers in India

Many developing economies have large informal sectors and growing urban youth populations, who lack basic social protections at work. The CEP surveyed 8,500 workers aged 18 to 40 in urban India to understand their experi... Read more...

Fiscal Studies:

Devolving skills: the case of the apprenticeship grant for employers.

One rationale for devolution is that local decision makers may be well placed to adapt national policies to the local context. We test whether such adaptation helps meet programme objectives in the case of the Apprentice... Read more...

Chiara Cavaglia, Sandra McNally and Henry G. Overman

1 August 2020

Keywords: economic geography ; apprenticeships ; devolution ; employment

Globalisation and urban polarisation

External trade affects the internal spatial structure of an economy, promoting growth in some cities or regions and decline in others. Internal adjustment to these changes has often proved to be extremely slow and painfu... Read more...

16 July 2020

Keywords: globalisation ; urban ; de-industrialisation ; rustbelt ; polarisation

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America:

Ethnolinguistic diversity and urban agglomeration.

This article shows that higher ethnolinguistic diversity is associated with a greater risk of social tensions and conflict, which, in turn, is a dispersion force lowering urbanization and the incentives to move to big ci... Read more...

Ulrich J. Eberle, J. Vernon Henderson, Dominic Rohner and Kurt Schmidheiny

14 July 2020

Keywords: conflict ; democracy ; ethnolinguistic diversity ; fractionalization ; urbanization

This paper provides a synthesis of the state of knowledge on the economics of skyscrapers. First, we document how vertical urban growth has gained pace over the course of the 20th century. Second, we lay out a simple the... Read more...

7 July 2020

Keywords: density ; economics ; history ; skyscraper ; urban

Strategy, investment and policy for a strong and sustainable recovery: an action plan

The UK and the world have suffered disruption and hardship from the COVID-19 pandemic on an immense scale. Together with the tragic consequences of the health crisis, there is now a real risk of protracted global depress... Read more...

Nick Robins, James Rydge, Nicholas Stern, Sam Unsworth, Anna Valero and Dimitri Zenghelis

2 July 2020

Keywords: covid-19 ; sustainable recovery ; investment ; productivity ; infrastructure ; net zero greenhouse emissions ; 'building back better' ; uk economy

Journal of Economic Geography:

Airports, access and local economic performance: evidence from china.

In this article, we study the effect of airports on local economic performance that arises from better access to domestic markets in the context of China’s recent airport network expansion. We measure access through the ... Read more...

Stephen Gibbons and Wenjie Wu

1 July 2020

Keywords: airports ; china ; local development ; public infrastructure

The effects of supporting local business: evidence from the UK

This paper assesses the effects of a significant place-based intervention that targeted local businesses in deprived areas in the UK. To gain identification, we use data at a fine spatial scale and a regression discontin... Read more...

Elias Einiö and Henry G. Overman

Keywords: uk economy ; employment ; inequality ; economic geography

Urbanization in the developing world: Too early or too slow?

We describe patterns of urbanization in the developing world and the extent to which they differ from the developed world. We consider the extent to which urbanization in the developing world can be explained by conventi... Read more...

J. Vernon Henderson and Matthew A. Turner

1 June 2020

Keywords: urbanisation ; economic development

World Bank Economic Review:

Migration and urbanization in post-apartheid south africa.

Although Africa has experienced rapid urbanization in recent decades, little is known about the process of urbanization across the continent. This paper exploits a natural experiment, the abolition of South African pass ... Read more...

Jan David Bakker, Christopher Parsons and Ferdinand Rauch

Keywords: economic geography ; migration ; natural experiment ; urbanization

Spatial disparities in income and worklessness across areas of the European Union are profound and persistent. Concerns about these disparities and the appropriate policy response are longstanding. Two trends have re-ene... Read more...

Keywords: economic geography ; human capital ; skills ; occupational choice ; labor productivity ; wage level and structure ; regional labor markets ; population ; neighborhood characteristics

Damned by dams? Infrastructure and conflict

This study investigates the impact of dams on local conflict across the world with georeferenced location information on dams and conflict events for the years 1989 to 2016. The identification strategy exploits exogenous... Read more...

Ulrich J. Eberle

28 May 2020

Keywords: dams ; infrastructure ; conflict ; civil war ; ethnicity ; fractionalization ; inequality

Journal of Development Economics:

The belt and road initiative: reshaping economic geography in central asia.

This paper develops a computable spatial equilibrium model of Central Asia and uses it to analyze the possible effects of the Belt and Road Initiative on the economy of the region. The model captures international and su... Read more...

Julia Bird, Mathilde Sylvie Maria Lebrand and Anthony J. Venables

Keywords: central asia ; economic geography ; regional integration ; spatial modeling ; transport infrastructure

The role of demand in land re-development

Vacant, previously-developed land in cities can generate negative externalities on surrounding areas, and is often the target of policies to promote re-development. This paper provides estimates of the price sensitivity ... Read more...

Felipe Carozzi

Keywords: economic geography ; brownfields ; land re-development ; land supply

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics:

Flooded cities.

Does economic activity move away from areas that are at high risk of recurring shocks? We examine this question in the context of floods, which displaced more than 650 million people worldwide in the last 35 years. We st... Read more...

Adriana Kocornik-Mina, Thomas K.J. McDermott, Guy Michaels and Ferdinand Rauch

1 April 2020

Keywords: urbanization ; flooding ; climate change ; urban recovery

In brief... Swings and silicon roundabouts: does cluster policy work?

Despite scepticism among researchers, policies to promote geographical clusters of firms in the same sector remain popular. Max Nathan evaluates a flagship programme set up a decade ago to accelerate the growth of Tech C... Read more...

2 March 2020

Keywords: cities ; clusters ; technology ; economic development ; synthetic controls

People, places and politics: the challenge of 'levelling up' the UK

As has been much discussed since the election, economic performance varies widely among the towns, cities and regions of the UK. Henry Overman argues that policies to address these spatial disparities should be judged on... Read more...

Keywords: spatial disparities ; skills ; cities ; left-behind places ; 2019 general election

Creative differences? Measuring creative economy employment in the United States and the UK

This paper compares the creative economies of the US and the UK regions and nations using high-quality administrative microdata spanning the period 2011–13. The creative industries are highly urbanized in both countries.... Read more...

Thomas Kemeny, Max Nathan and Peter O'Brien

1 March 2020

Keywords: cities ; creative industries ; creative trident ; cross-country analysis ; labour markets ; occupations

CEP Urban and Spatial Programme Blog:

Housing: 'no shortage' - is it nonsense.

Paul Cheshire questions arguments that Britain is not suffering from a housing shortage, pointing out errors in common understanding.... Read more...

1 December 2019

Keywords: economic geography ; housing ; policy

People, places and politics

Economic performance varies widely between the towns, cities and regions of the UK. On some measures, this variation has widened since the financial crisis. These disparities have already proved to be a key theme in the ... Read more...

22 November 2019

Journal of International Economics:

Geography, competition, and optimal multilateral trade policy.

How should multilateral trade policy be designed in a world in which countries differ in terms of market access and technology, and firms with market power differ in terms of productivity? We answer this question in a mo... Read more...

Antonella Nocco, Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano and Matteo Salto

1 September 2019

Keywords: international trade policy ; monopolistic competition ; firm heterogeneity ; pricing to market ; multilateralism ; productivity ; globalisation ; economic geography

Does light touch cluster policy work? Evaluating the tech city programme

Despite academic scepticism, cluster policies remain popular with policymakers. This paper evaluates the causal impact of a flagship UK technology cluster programme. I build a simple framework and identify effects using ... Read more...

29 August 2019

Residential mobility in the UK: how distance and local economic conditions drive residential choices

Monica Langella and Alan Manning find that high unemployment in an area induces people to move away, and has an even stronger effect on the attractiveness of that area to potential movers. They also find that younger and... Read more...

Monica Langella and Alan Manning

18 August 2019

Keywords: british and irish politics and policy ; cep ; featured ; lse comment ; economic conditions ; economy ; employment ; immigration ; migration ; moblity ; moving ; opportunity ; regional ; regions ; residential mobility ; unemployment

Measuring urban economic density

At the heart of urban economics are agglomeration economies, which drive the existence and extent of cities. This paper estimates urban agglomeration effects, exploring simple and very nuanced measures of economic densit... Read more...

J. Vernon Henderson, Sebastian Kriticos and Dzhamilya Nigmatulina

14 August 2019

Keywords: agglomeration economies ; cities ; economic density ; economic development ; landscan ; pull forces ; rural-urban migration ; sub-saharan africa ; urbanization

We study whether urban density affects the exposure of city dwellers to ambient air pollution using satellite-derived measures of air quality for the contiguous United States. For identification, we rely on an instrument... Read more...

15 July 2019

Keywords: air pollution ; urban congestion ; density ; health

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Task specialization in u.s. cities from 1880 to 2000.

We develop a new methodology for quantifying the tasks undertaken within occupations using over 3,000 verbs from more than 12,000 occupational descriptions in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOTs). Using micro dat... Read more...

Guy Michaels, Ferdinand Rauch and Stephen J. Redding

1 June 2019

Keywords: economic development ; human interaction ; urbanization

Production networks, geography, and firm performance

This paper examines the importance of buyer-supplier relationships for firm performance. We develop a model in which firms outsource tasks and search for suppliers. Lower search and outsourcing costs lead firms to search... Read more...

Andrew B. Bernard, Andreas Moxnes and Yukiko U. Saito

1 April 2019

Keywords: production networks ; trade ; productivity ; infrastructure ;

The urban wage premium in imperfect labour markets

20 March 2019

Sustainable growth in the UK

Anna Valero and colleagues urge the UK government to put action on climate change and sustainability at the heart of its growth strategy.... Read more...

Ralf Martin, James Rydge and Anna Valero

1 March 2019

Keywords: growth ; climate ; climate change ; sustainability ; industrial strategy ; productivity ; public policy ; cities ; transportation ; infrastructure ; skills ; innovation ; growth commission

Stephen Redding and colleagues examine how the introduction of steam railways shaped the emerging metropolitan area of London.... Read more...

Keywords: railways ; cities ; london ; agglomeration ; urbanization ; transportation

Trade and growth in the Iron Age

Stephan Maurer and colleagues investigate the growth effects of one of the first trade expansions in history: the crossing of the Mediterranean by the Phoenicians ... Read more...

Keywords: growth ; trade ; urbanization ; locational fundamentals

In brief... What the Berlin Wall can teach us about urban development

Award-winning CEP research considers what can be learned from the division and reunification of Berlin.... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Stephen J. Redding, Daniel M. Sturm and Nikolaus Wolf

Keywords: reunification ; berlin ; agglomeration ; dispersion ; density ; cities

CEP industrial strategy paper

Sustainable growth in the uk: seizing opportunities from technological change and the transition to a low-carbon economy.

An overarching strategy for sustainable growth is required to address the dual challenges of restoring productivity growth and managing a transition to a low-carbon economy – priorities in both the UK and other G20 count... Read more...

James Rydge, Ralf Martin and Anna Valero

3 December 2018

Keywords: growth ; climate ; climate change ; industrial strategy ; productivity ; public policy ; cities ; transportation ; infrastructure ; skills ; innovation ; growth commission ; uk economy

Journal of Housing Economics:

Institutional settings and urban sprawl: evidence from europe.

This article explores the role of institutional settings in determining spatial variation in urban sprawl across Europe. We first synthesize the emerging literature that links land use policies and local fiscal incentive... Read more...

Maximilian v. Ehrlich, Christian A. L. Hilber and Olivier Schöni

1 December 2018

Keywords: decentralization ; europe ; housing supply ; land use regulation ; supply constraints ; urban sprawl

Housing in Europe: A different continent – A continent of differences

This article provides the introduction to the special issue on ‘Housing in Europe: a different continent – a continent of differences’ in the Journal of Housing Economics in 2018. Europe is a large continent with a long ... Read more...

Keywords: affordability ; credit conditions ; europe ; institutional settings ; land and housing markets ; monetary policy ; privatization ; regulation ; relationship lending ; social housing ; tenure ; urban sprawl

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Tall buildings and land values: height and construction cost elasticities in chicago, 1870-2010.

Despite unprecedented vertical growth in large cities, the economics of skyscrapers remain understudied. We combine data on tall buildings with a panel of land prices covering 140 years to analyze the determinants of urb... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Daniel P. McMillen

Keywords: cities ; chicago ; density ; height ; land value ; skyscraper

Review of International Economics:

Globalization and urban polarization.

5 November 2018

Does additional spending help urban schools? An evaluation using boundary discontinuities

This study exploits spatial anomalies in school funding policy in England to provide new evidence on the impact of resources on student achievement in urban areas. Anomalies arise because the funding allocated to Local E... Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Sandra McNally and Martina Viarengo

1 October 2018

Keywords: education ; spending ; schools ; urban

Incubators, accelerators and regional economic development

A growing wave of co-location programmes promises to boost growth for young firms. Despite great public and policy interest we have little idea whether such programmes are effective. This paper categorises accelerators a... Read more...

25 September 2018

Keywords: incubators ; accelerators ; entrepreneurship ; clusters ; cities ; economic development

Modern metropolitan areas involve large concentrations of economic activity and the transport of millions of people each day between their residence and workplace. We use the revolution in transport technology from the i... Read more...

12 September 2018

Keywords: agglomeration ; urbanization ; transportation ; economic geography

At the heart of urban economics are agglomeration economies, which drive the existence and extent of cities and are also central to structural transformation and the urbanization process. This paper evaluates the use of ... Read more...

6 September 2018

Keywords: cities ; economic density ; africa

Location, Search Costs and Youth Unemployment: Experimental Evidence from Transport Subsidies

Do high search costs affect the labour market outcomes of jobseekers living far away from jobs? I randomly assign transport subsidies to unemployed youth in urban Ethiopia. Treated respondents increase job search intensi... Read more...

Simon Franklin

1 September 2018

Keywords: experimental study ; labor market ; subsidy system ; transportation system ; unemployment ; urban population ; young population ; ethiopia

Market Potential and Global Growth over the Long Twentieth Century

We examine the evolution of market potential and its role in driving economic growth over the long twentieth century. Theoretically, we exploit a structural gravity model to derive a closed-form solution for a widely-use... Read more...

David S. Jacks and Dennis Novy

Keywords: economic geography ; market potential ; structural gravity ; trade costs ;

Urban Capacity and Economic Output

This report was commissioned by the National Infrastructure Commission as part of the evidence base for the National Infrastructure Assessment. The views expressed and recommendations set out in this report are the autho... Read more...

Stephen Gibbons and Daniel J. Graham

9 August 2018

Keywords: spatial economy ; output ; large cities

The spatial impacts of a massive rail disinvestment program: the Beeching axe

Transport investment is a popular policy instrument and many recent studies have investigated whether new infrastructure generates economic benefits and has spatial economic impacts. Our work approaches the question diff... Read more...

6 August 2018

Keywords: rail ; infrastructure ; beeching

Market potential and global growth over the long twentieth century

20 July 2018

Keywords: economic geography ; market potential ; structural gravity ; trade costs

Of mice and merchants: trade and growth in the Iron Age

We study the causal connection between trade and development using one of the earliest massive trade expansions: the first systematic crossing of open seas in the Mediterranean during the time of the Phoenicians. We cons... Read more...

12 July 2018

Urbanisation in developing economies: Building cities that work

This paper reviews recent work on the economics of fast growing developing country cities, with a focus on Africa. It sets out some of the broad facts about African urbanisation and summarises two recent pieces of resear... Read more...

11 May 2018

Keywords: africa ; development ; urbanisation

Who gets the urban surplus?

High productivity in cities creates an economic surplus relative to other areas. How is this divided between workers and landowners? Simple models with homogenous labour suggest that it accrues largely-or entirely-in the... Read more...

Paul Collier and Anthony J. Venables

Keywords: cities ; land rent ; productivity ; sorting ; wages

Does gentrification displace poor households? An 'identification-via-interaction' approach

My theoretical model motivates an ‘identification-via-interaction’ (IvI) approach that separates the causal impact of gentrification on poor exits from endogenous channels. In the empirical analysis, I create a measure o... Read more...

Sevrin Waights

16 April 2018

Keywords: neighbourhood change ; mobility ; turnover ; causality ; cities ; urban ; housing

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

One or many cohesion policies of the european union on the diverging impacts of cohesion policy across member states.

Do regions in all Member States (MSs) of the European Union (EU) benefit from Cohesion Policy? Are regional impacts persistently diversified across countries? In order to answer these questions this paper explores how th... Read more...

Riccardo Crescenzi and Mara Giua

22 February 2018

Keywords: cohesion policy ; european union ; regions ; growth ; employment

Resetting the Urban Network: 117-2012

Do fixed geographic features such as coastlines and rivers determine town locations, or can historical events trap towns in unfavourable locations for centuries? We examine the effects on town locations of the collapse o... Read more...

Guy Michaels and Ferdinand Rauch

1 February 2018

Keywords: economic geography ; economic history ; path dependence ; transportation

The Impact of Public Employment: Evidence from Bonn

This paper evaluates the impact of public employment on private sector activity using the relocation of the German federal government from Berlin to Bonn in the wake of the Second World War as a source of exogenous varia... Read more...

4 January 2018

Keywords: economic geography ; public employment ; place-based policies ; german division

Colonial Legacies: Shaping African Cities

Differential institutions imposed during colonial rule continue to affect the spatial structure and urban interactions in African cities. Based on a sample of 318 cities across 28 countries using satellite data on built ... Read more...

Neeraj Baruah, J. Vernon Henderson and Cong Peng

7 November 2017

Keywords: colonialism ; persistence ; africa ; sprawl ; urban form ; urban planning ; leapfrog

A review of volume 5 of the Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics

[No abstract available]... Read more...

Keith Head, Thierry Mayer and Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano

1 November 2017

Keywords: literature review ; regional economy ; urban economy

Life in a slum: Understanding living conditions in Nairobi's slums across time and space

This paper overviews the role of slums in urban Africa, focusing on Nairobi. It reveals the characteristics of slums and how these have changed over time. Spatially disaggregated data show that slum areas are very dense ... Read more...

Julia Bird, Piero Montebruno and Tanner Regan

1 October 2017

Keywords: housing ; informal settlements ; urban

Planning Ahead for Better Neighborhoods: Long Run Evidence from Tanzania

What are the long run consequences of planning and providing basic infrastructure in neighborhoods, where people build their own homes? We study "Sites and Services" projects implemented in seven Tanzanian cities during ... Read more...

27 September 2017

The Local Economic Impacts of Regeneration Projects: Evidence from UK's Single Regeneration Budget

We study the local economic impacts of a major regeneration programme aimed at enhancing the quality of life of local people in deprived neighbourhoods in the UK. The analysis is based on a panel of firm and area level d... Read more...

4 August 2017

Keywords: single regeneration budget ; regeneration ; employment ; neighbourhoods ; urban policy

Annual Review of Economics:

Quantitative spatial economics.

The observed uneven distribution of economic activity across space is influenced by variation in exogenous geographical characteristics and endogenous interactions between agents in goods and factor markets. Until the pa... Read more...

Stephen J. Redding and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg

1 August 2017

Keywords: agglomeration ; cities ; economic geography ; quantitative models ; spatial economics

Journal of Technology Transfer:

Academic inventors: collaboration and proximity with industry.

This paper addresses a number of fundamental research questions on university-industry (U-I) collaborations. Are U-I collaborations intrinsically different from other forms of collaboration, such as inter-firm or inter-u... Read more...

Riccardo Crescenzi, Andrea Filippetti and Simona Iammarino

Keywords: innovation ; institutional and geographical proximity ; regions ; university-industry collaboration

Airports and economic performance in China

China’s airport construction policy has been successful in boosting manufacturing output, according to research by Stephen Gibbons and Wenjie Wu. Their study also finds that productivity impacts have been greater for pri... Read more...

3 July 2017

Keywords: airports ; infrastructure ; productivity ; china

The Compact City in Empirical Research: A Quantitative Literature Review

The ‘compact city’ is one of the most prominent concepts to have emerged in the global urban policy debate, though it is difficult to ascertain to what extent its theorised positive outcomes can be substantiated by evide... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Elisabetta Pietrostefani

22 June 2017

Keywords: compact ; city ; density ; meta-analysis ; sustainability ; urban

The UK's Regional Divide: Can Policy Make a Difference

There are large variations in economic performance across the cities and regions of the UK. There is a broad North-South pattern to these disparities. But there is also substantial variation within those broad areas: som... Read more...

2 June 2017

Keywords: regional divide ; cities ; devolution deals

The UK's New Industrial Strategy

‘Industrial strategy’ has returned to the policy agenda, with the government recently setting out its plans in a Green Paper, and dedicated sections appearing in the election manifestos of all three main parties. Until r... Read more...

Anna Valero

26 May 2017

Keywords: uk 2017 general election ; industrial strategy ; skills ; infrastructure ; productivity ; growth ; industrial strategy

Urban economics for the developing World: An introduction

This is an introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Urban Economics on “Urbanization in Developing Countries: Past and Present”. We argue that the rapid urbanization and the rise of cities in the developing wo... Read more...

Edward L. Glaeser and J. Vernon Henderson

1 March 2017

Keywords: development economics ; urban economics

Political favoritism in China's capital markets and its effect on city sizes

This paper examines political favoritism of cites in national capital markets and the effect of that favoritism on city sizes. The paper estimates the city-by-city variation in the prices of capital across cities in Chin... Read more...

Wei Cai, Yi Chen and J. Vernon Henderson

Keywords: capital market distortions ; china ; city size ; political favoritism ; urban bias

Airports, Market Access and Local Economic Performance: Evidence from China

In this paper we study the effect of airports on local economic performance that arises from better access to domestic markets, using China’s recent rapid air network expansion. We estimate the effects of the implied cha... Read more...

6 February 2017

The Economic Effects of Density: A Synthesis

This paper synthesises the state of knowledge on the economic effects of density. We consider 15 outcome categories and 202 estimates of density elasticities from 102 studies. More than 50% of these estimates have not be... Read more...

31 January 2017

Keywords: compact ; city ; density ; meta-analysis ; elasticity ; urban

Global investments and regional development trajectories: the missing links

Global investments and regional development trajectories: the missing links. Regional Studies. Regional economic development has been long conceptualized as a non-linear, interactive and socially embedded process: these ... Read more...

Riccardo Crescenzi and Simona Iammarino

1 January 2017

Keywords: europe ; foreign direct investment (fdi) ; local–global connectivity ; regional development ; regions

Spatial frictions

The world is replete with spatial frictions. Shipping goods across cities entails trade frictions. Commuting within cities causes urban frictions. How important are these frictions in shaping the spatial economy? We deve... Read more...

Kristian Behrens, Giordano Mion, Yasusada Murata and Jens Südekum

Keywords: city-size distribution ; markups ; productivity ; trade frictions ; urban frictions

Agglomeration externalities and urban growth controls

How can land use policy enhance the exploitation of external urban agglomeration economies? In a system of heterogeneous cities, we show that the second-best land use policy constrains city creation, while subsidizing (t... Read more...

Wouter Vermeulen

Keywords: agglomeration externalities ; growth controls ; second-best policy ; systems of cities ; urban sprawl

Innovation, SMEs and the liability of distance: The demand and supply of bank funding in UK peripheral regions

This article considers geographical variations in the demand and supply of bank finance for innovative firms in the UK. It uses a detailed survey on the finances of almost 40,000 UK Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises fo... Read more...

Ross Brown and Neil Lee

Keywords: finance ; innovation ; peripheral regions ; smes ; thin markets

Urban renewal after the Berlin wall: A place-based policy evaluation

We use a quasi-experimental research design to study the effects of a spatially targeted renewal policy implemented in Berlin, Germany, in the aftermath of the city's division during the Cold War period. Our results sugg... Read more...

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt, Wolfgang Maennig and Felix J. Richter

Keywords: berlin ; placed-based policy evaluation ; quasi-experiment ; real estate ; redevelopment ; renewal ; revitalization ; urban

Has climate change driven urbanization in Africa?

This paper documents strong but differentiated links between climate and urbanization in large panels of districts and cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, which has dried substantially in the past fifty years. The key dimensio... Read more...

Uwe Deichmann, J. Vernon Henderson and Adam Storeygard

Keywords: africa ; climate change ; urbanization

Innovation in Russia: The Territorial Dimension

The debate on Russia’s innovation performance has paid little attention to the role of geography. This article addresses this gap by integrating an evolutionary dimension in an augmented regional knowledge production fun... Read more...

Riccardo Crescenzi and Alexander Jaax

Keywords: brics ; evolutionary economic geography ; innovation ; r&d ; regions ; russia

Environment and Planning A:

Ethnic diversity and business performance: which firms which cities.

A growing literature examines how ethnic diversity influences economic outcomes in cities and inside firms. However, firm–city interactions remain more or less unexplored. Ethnic diversity may help firm performance by in... Read more...

1 December 2016

Keywords: business performance ; cities ; diversity ; ethnic diversity ; firm-level analysis

The observed uneven distribution of economic activity across space is influenced by variation in exogenous geographical characteristics and endogenous interactions between agents in goods and factor markets. Until recent... Read more...

11 October 2016

In brief... Powerhouse of cards?

It is not yet clear whether the UK government’s commitment to a ‘Northern Powerhouse’ will survive the change of personnel at the top. But as Neil Lee explains, the idea of seeking to reduce regional disparities via spat... Read more...

4 October 2016

Keywords: regional disparities ; northern powerhouse ; george osborne ; infrastructure ; investment ; devolution

In brief... Investing in roads

Between 1990 and 2010, China constructed an extensive modern road network, including a national system of limited access highways. Vernon Henderson and colleagues investigate the impact on the growth of Chinese cities an... Read more...

Nathaniel Baum-Snow, Loren Brandt, J. Vernon Henderson, Matthew A. Turner and Qinghua Zhang

Keywords: construction ; china ; ricardian trade models ; primate cities

Impact of Structural Reforms on Regional Growth: Distance to the Frontier Matters

This paper aims to understand the impact of nation-wide structural policies on the productivity growth of OECD regions. In particular we explore how this impact varies with the productivity gap of regions with their coun... Read more...

Sabine D'Costa, Enrique Garcilazo and Joaquim Oliveira Martins

29 July 2016

Keywords: structural reforms ; regional growth ; lagging regions

Production networks, geography and firm performance

This paper examines the importance of buyer-supplier relationships, geography and the structure of the production network in firm performance. We develop a simple model where firms can outsource tasks and search for supp... Read more...

14 June 2016

Keywords: production networks ; trade ; productivity ; infrastructure

Location, Search Costs and Youth Unemployment: Experimental Evidence from Transport Subsidies in Addis Ababa

Do high search costs affect the labour market outcomes of job seekers living far away from jobs? I randomly assign transport subsidies to unemployed youth in urban Ethiopia. Treated respondents increase job search intens... Read more...

26 May 2016

Keywords: job search ; spatial mismatch ; unemployment ; cash constraints ; urban ; transpor

Building the City: Urban Transition and Institutional Frictions

We model the building of a city, estimate parameters of the model, and calculate welfare losses from institutional frictions encountered in changing land-use. We distinguish formal and slum construction technologies; in ... Read more...

J. Vernon Henderson, Tanner Regan and Anthony J. Venables

27 April 2016

Keywords: city ; urban ; urban growth ; slums ; urban structure ; urban form ; housing investment ; capital durability

Subways and Urban Growth: Evidence from Earth

We investigate the relationship between the extent of a city’s subway network, its population and its spatial configuration. To accomplish this investigation, for the 632 largest cities in the world, we construct panel d... Read more...

Marco Gonzalez-Navarro and Matthew A. Turner

Keywords: subways ; public transit ; urban growth ; urban decentralization

Why Governments Won't Invest

The UK Government is currently exerting a sharp and tightening squeeze on public investment at a time when borrowing for public investment has never, historically, been cheaper with interest rates close to zero in real t... Read more...

Sir Vince Cable

17 March 2016

Keywords: uk economy ; public investment ; public debt ; government policy ; infrastructure

One Mandarin benefits the whole clan: hometown favoritism in an authoritarian regime

We study patronage politics in authoritarian Vietnam, using an exhaustive panel of 603 ranking officials from 2000 to 2010 to estimate their promotions’ impact on infrastructure in their hometowns of patrilineal ancestry... Read more...

Quoc-Anh Do, Kieu-Trang Nguyen and Anh N. Tran

24 February 2016

Keywords: favoritism ; patronage ; authoritarian regime ; political connection ; hometown ; infrastructure ; distributive politics

Economic activity tends to return to flood-prone areas after floods rather than relocating to higher ground. What’s more, cities built in flood-prone areas are locking in exposure to flood risk for the long term. These a... Read more...

22 February 2016

Ecological Economics:

The greener, the happier the effect of urban land use on residential well-being.

We investigate the effect of urban land use on residential well-being in major German cities, using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and cross-section data from the European Urban Atlas. We reduce concerns... Read more...

Jens Kolbe, Christian Krekel and Henry Wustermann

1 January 2016

Keywords: abandoned areas ; european urban atlas ; forests ; german socio-economic panel ; green urban areas ; life satisfaction ; monetary valuation ; spatial analysis ; urban land use ; waters

Does economic activity relocate away from areas that are at high risk of recurring shocks? We examine this question in the context of floods, which are among the costliest and most common natural disasters. Over the past... Read more...

17 December 2015

Commuting, migration and local employment elasticities

Many changes in the economic environment are local, including policy changes and infrastructure investments. The effect of these changes depends crucially on the ability of factors to move in response. Therefore a key ob... Read more...

Ferdinando Monte, Stephen J. Redding and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg

11 November 2015

Keywords: commuting ; migration and local employment elasticities

The economics of density: evidence from the Berlin Wall

This paper develops a quantitative model of internal city structure that features agglomeration and dispersion forces and an arbitrary number of heterogeneous city blocks. The model remains tractable and amenable to empi... Read more...

1 November 2015

What Makes Cities More Productive? Agglomeration Economies and the Role of Urban Governance: Evidence from 5 OECD Countries

This paper estimates agglomeration benefits across five OECD countries, and represents the first empirical analysis that combines evidence on agglomeration benefits and the productivity impact of metropolitan governance ... Read more...

Rudiger Ahrend, Emily Farchy, Ioannis Kaplanis and Alexander C. Lembcke

13 July 2015

Keywords: cities ; productivity ; governance ; agglomeration economies

Spillovers from Immigrant Diversity in Cities

Using comprehensive longitudinal matched employer-employee data for the U.S.,this paper provides new evidence on the relationship between productivity and immigration-spawned urban diversity. Existing empirical work has ... Read more...

Abigail Cooke and Thomas Kemeny

15 June 2015

Keywords: immigrants ; diversity ; productivity ; spillovers ; cities

#ElectionEconomics: The Research Evidence on Key Issues for Voters in the 2015 UK General Election

Please see the CEP #ElectionEconomics report(Paper 1)and the Executive Summary (Paper 2) that cover all the election 2015 briefings, discussing the research evidence on 15 of the UK's key policy battlegrounds: immigratio... Read more...

Ghazala Azmat, Brian Bell, Jonathan Colmer, Antoine Dechezleprêtre, Swati Dhingra, Christian A. L. Hilber, Stephen Machin, Alan Manning, Ralf Martin, Alistair McGuire, Sandra McNally, Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano, Henry G. Overman, Isabelle Roland, Thomas Sampson, Anna Valero, John Van Reenen, Jonathan Wadsworth, Gill Wyness and Gabriel Zucman

30 April 2015

Keywords: 2015 uk general election ; government policy ; austerity ; productivity ; health ; nhs ; education ; higher education ; immigration ; brexit ; eu ; inequality ; real wages ; unemployment ; gender ; management ; productivity ; uk housing ; environment ; climate change ; uk cities ; infrastructure ; taxation

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Planes, trains and automobiles: the economic impact of transport infrastructure.

In the run up to the 2015 general election, the main political parties have very mixed views as to what should be done about transport in the UK. Big transport investment proposals - expansion of London's airports and hi... Read more...

Stephen Gibbons

Revised July 2017

Keywords: transport ; infrastructure ; uk economy

The Economic Performance of UK Cities: Can Urban and Regional Policy Make a Difference to the North-South Divide

There are large variations in economic performance across UK cities and on some measures, they have widened since the global financial crisis. All main parties promise action to reduce them, but there is little differenc... Read more...

26 March 2015

Keywords: uk cities ; urban economies ; recession ; #electioneconomics ; spatial equilibrium ; labour ; housing market ; wages ; regional disparities

The Economic Value of Local Social Networks

The idea that local social capital yields economic benefits is fundamental to theories of agglomeration, and central to claims about the virtues of cities. However, this claim has not been evaluated using methods that pe... Read more...

Frank Ethridge, Maryann Feldman, Thomas Kemeny and Ted Zoller

19 January 2015

Keywords: cities ; economic development ; social networks ; social capital

Urban Development and Air Pollution: Evidence from a Global Panel of Cities

We exploit a unique panel of 75 metro areas (‘cities’) across the globe and employ a city-fixed effects model to identify the determinants of within-city changes in air pollution concentration between 2005 and 2011. Incr... Read more...

Christian A. L. Hilber and Charles Palmer

19 December 2014

Keywords: urbanization ; urban form ; decentralization ; air pollution ; transport ; built environment

City of dreams

Higher ability workers benefit more from bigger cities while housing costs there are higher for everyone, and yet there is little sorting on ability. A possible explanation is that young individuals have an imperfect ass... Read more...

Jorge De la Roca, Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano and Diego Puga

8 October 2014

Keywords: cities ; sorting ; agglomeration ; self-confidence ; learning

Gone with the wind

Wind farms reduce house prices in postcodes where the turbines are visible, according to research by Steve Gibbons. Households are willing to pay £1,000 a year to avoid a large wind farm visible within 2km. His study not... Read more...

3 October 2014

Keywords: housing prices ; environment ; wind farms ; infrastructure

Urban Economics and Urban Policy Challenging Conventional Policy Wisdom Hardcover

In this bold, exciting and readable volume, Paul Cheshire, Max Nathan and Henry Overman illustrate the insights that recent economic research brings to our understanding of cities, and the lessons for urban policy-making... Read more...

Paul C. Cheshire, Max Nathan and Henry G. Overman

30 May 2014

Keywords: economic geography ; cities ; urban policy making

Gone with the Wind: Valuing the Visual Impacts of Wind Turbines through House Prices

This study provides quantitative evidence on the local benefits and costs of wind farm developments in England and Wales, focussing on their visual environmental impacts. In the tradition of studies in environmental, pub... Read more...

2 April 2014

Culturally Clustered or in the Cloud? Location of Internet Start-ups in Berlin

Knowledge based firms like IT companies do neither have a capital- nor a land intensive production. They predominantly rely on qualified labour and increasingly depend on the location of its (potential) employees. This i... Read more...

Kristoffer Moeller

19 March 2014

Keywords: firm location ; urban amenities ; consumer city ; internet start-ups ; entrepreneurs ; berlin

Can cities be trapped in bad locations?

After the fall of the Roman Empire, urban life in France became a shadow of its former self, but in Britain it completely disappeared. Guy Michaels and Ferdinand Rauch use these contrasting experiences as a natural exper... Read more...

5 February 2014

Do Inventors Talk to Strangers? On Proximity and Collaborative Knowledge Creation

This paper investigates how physical, organisational, institutional, cognitive, social, and ethnic proximities between inventors shape their collaboration decisions. Using a new panel of UK inventors and a novel identifi... Read more...

Riccardo Crescenzi, Max Nathan and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

9 January 2014

Keywords: innovation ; patents ; proximities ; cities ; regions ; knowledge spillovers ; collaboration ; ethnicity

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

The state of the uk economy: diagnosis, prognosis and recommended treatment.

The UK economy has experienced a prolonged period of weakness over the last five years. John Van Reenen writes that the real problems for the UK are inadequate long-run investment in infrastructure, innovation and human ... Read more...

John Van Reenen

6 January 2014

Keywords: john van reenen ; lse comment ; the euro ; european economics ; finance ; business and regulation ; economic growth ; economics ; infrastructure ; uk ; uk economy ; unemployment

Urban Renewal after the Berlin Wall

Urban renewal areas are popular but empirically understudied spatial planning instruments designed to prevent urban decline and induce renewal. We use a quasi-experimental research design to study the effects of 22 renew... Read more...

18 December 2013

Keywords: urban ; renewal ; revitalization ; redevelopment ; hedonic regression ; quasi-experiment

In brief... Blackout babies: the impact of power cuts on fertility

A rolling blackout in Colombia in the early 1990s led to a rise in unplanned births, according to research by Amar Shanghavi and colleagues. What’s more, young women who became mothers after the blackout had worse outcom... Read more...

Thiemo Fetzer, Oliver Pardo and Amar Shanghavi

10 December 2013

Keywords: fertility ; infrastructure ; blackouts ; unplanned parenthood

Immigrant Diversity and Economic Development in Cities: A Critical Review

This paper reviews a growing literature investigating how ‘immigrant’ diversity relates to urban economic performance. As distinct from the labor-supply focus of much of the economics of immigration, this paper reviews w... Read more...

Thomas Kemeny

29 November 2013

Keywords: diversity ; immigration ; cities ; regional economic performance

Resetting the urban network: 117-2012

Do locational fundamentals such as coastlines and rivers determine town locations, or can historical events trap towns in unfavourable locations for centuries? We examine the effects on town locations of the collapse of ... Read more...

27 November 2013

An urban legend?! Power rationing, fertility and its effects on mothers

This paper answers the question whether extreme power rationing can induce changes in human fertility and thus, generate “mini baby booms”. We study a period of extensive power rationing in Colombia that lasted for most ... Read more...

18 November 2013

Here Be Startups: Exploring a young digital cluster in Inner East London

The digital industries cluster known as 'Silicon Roundabout' has been quietly growing in East London since the 1990s. Now rebranded 'Tech City', it is now the focus of huge public and government attention. National and l... Read more...

Max Nathan and Emma Vandore

7 November 2013

Keywords: digital economy ; cities ; clusters ; innovation ; london ; silicon roundabout ; tech city

Trade integration, market size and industrialization: evidence from China's national trunk highway system

Large scale transport infrastructure investments connect both large metropolitan centers of production as well as small peripheral regions. Are the resulting trade cost reductions a force for the diffusion of industrial ... Read more...

Benjamin Faber

22 October 2013

Keywords: trade integration ; industrialization ; road infrastructure

Cultural Diversity, Cities and Innovation: firm Effects or City Effects?

Growing cultural diversity is seen as important for innovation. Research has focused on two potential mechanisms: a firm effect, with diversity at the firm level improving knowledge sourcing or ideas generation, and a ci... Read more...

11 October 2013

Keywords: cultural diversity ; innovation ; cities ; smes ; migration

Urban Escalators and Inter-regional Elevators: The Difference that Location, Mobility and Sectoral Specialisation make to Occupational Progression

This paper uses evidence from the (British) Longitudinal Study to examine the influence on occupational advancement of the city-region of residence (an escalator effect) and of relocation between city-regions (an elevato... Read more...

Tony Champion, Mike Coombes and Ian Gordon

25 September 2013

Keywords: escalator region ; labour migration ; elevator effect ; city-regions ; social mobility ; career progression

The economic future of British cities

Henry Overman surveys the evidence on potentially effective responses to the recession and longer-term structural change.... Read more...

27 June 2013

Keywords: cities ; urban economies ; recession

The Urban Wage Growth Premium: Sorting or Learning?

This paper is concerned with the urban wage premium and addresses two central issues about which the field has not yet reached a consensus. First, the extent to which sorting of high ability individuals into urban areas ... Read more...

Sabine D'Costa and Henry G. Overman

17 May 2013

Keywords: urban wage premium ; agglomeration ; cities ; wage growth ; worker mobility

Do Large Departments Make Academics More Productive? Agglomeration and Peer Effects in Research

We study the effect of a large set of department characteristics on individual publication records. We control for many individual time-varying characteristics, individual fixed-effects and reverse causality. Department ... Read more...

Clément Bosquet and Pierre-Philippe Combes

23 April 2013

Keywords: productivity determinants ; economic geography ; networks ; economics of science ; selection and endogeneity

How Far Do England’s Second-Order Cities Emulate London as Human-Capital ‘Escalators’?

In the urban resurgence accompanying the growth of the knowledge economy, second-order cities appear to be losing out to the principal city, especially where the latter is much larger and benefits from substantially grea... Read more...

21 March 2013

Keywords: human-capital escalator ; second-order cities ; england ; ons longitudinal study ; career progression ; city region

Top Team Demographics, Innovation and Business Performance: Findings from English Firms and Cities 2008-9

High levels of net migration to the UK have contributed to growing cultural diversity, and researchers are turning their attention to the long-term effects of diversity on productivity. Yet little is known about these is... Read more...

8 March 2013

Keywords: cities ; innovation ; entrepreneurship ; cultural diversity ; migration ; gender

CEO Incentive Contracts in China: Why Does City Location Matter?

CEO incentive contracts are commonplace in China but their incidence varies significantly across Chinese cities. We show that city and provincial policy experiments help explain this variance. We examine the role of two ... Read more...

Alex Bryson, John Forth and Minghai Zhou

15 February 2013

Keywords: executive compensation ; ceo's ; privatisation ; fdi ; china ; cities

Task Specialization in U.S. Cities from 1880-2000

We develop a new methodology for quantifying the tasks undertaken within occupations using 3,000 verbs from around 12,000 occupational descriptions in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOTs). Using micro-data from t... Read more...

5 February 2013

Specialization and Regional Economic Development

Debates about urban growth and change often center on specialization.However, arguments linking specialization to metropolitan economic development contain diverse, and sometimes conflicting, claims. Is it better to be h... Read more...

Thomas Kemeny and Michael Storper

6 December 2012

Keywords: specialization ; diversification ; agglomeration economies ; urban wages

The Economics of Density: Evidence from the Berlin Wall

This paper develops a quantitative model of city structure to separate agglomeration forces, dispersion forces and fundamentals as determinants of location choices. The model remains tractable and amenable to empirical a... Read more...

13 September 2012

Keywords: agglomeration ; dispersion ; density ; cities

28 June 2012

Keywords: agglomeration ; dispersion ; density ; cities ; economic geography

Ambition, Human Capital Acquisition and the Metropolitan Escalator

This paper examines the relation between ambition, as a form of dynamic human capital, and the escalator role of high order metropolitan regions, as originally identified by Fielding (1989). It argues that occupational p... Read more...

Keywords: escalator region ; migration ; urban labour market ; london ; social mobility ; human capital

Is Pennine England becoming more Polycentric or more Centripetal? An Analysis of Commuting Flows in a Transforming Industrial Region, 1981-2001

This paper examines census-derived commuting data for the world’s earliest major urbanindustrial region, now home to 10 million people. Owing its origins to water power from the Pennine rivers, this region now comprises ... Read more...

Tony Champion and Mike Coombes

25 April 2012

Keywords: polycentricity ; multi-scalar ; urbanisation ; commuting ; pennine england

Agglomeration, Trade and Selection

This paper studies how firm heterogeneity in terms of productivity affects the balance between agglomeration and dispersion forces in the presence of pecuniary externalities through a selection model of monopolistic comp... Read more...

Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano

29 February 2012

Keywords: agglomeration ; trade ; heterogeneity ; selection ; economic geography

A Note on the Value of Foregone Open Space in Sprawling Cities

Foregone benefits of the open space that is sacrificed through urban sprawl are hard to quantify. We obtain a simple benchmark measure by introducing a demand for trips beyond the urban boundary into the monocentric city... Read more...

Jan Rouwendal and Wouter Vermeulen

2 February 2012

Keywords: urban sprawl ; open space ; growth controls ; outdoor recreation

External Benefits of Brownfield Redevelopment: An Applied Urban General Equilbirum Analysis

Does brownfield redevelopment warrant government support? We explore several external benefits in an urban general equilibrium framework. Preferences are modelled such that demand for housing units in the city is downwar... Read more...

Niels Vermeer and Wouter Vermeulen

17 January 2012

Keywords: brownfield redevelopment ; land use externalities ; urban general equilibrium ; benefit-cost analysis

Spatial Frictions

20 December 2011

Keywords: trade frictions ; urban frictions ; productivity ; city-size distribution ; markups

Agglomeration Externalities and Urban Growth Controls

Should constraints on urban expansion be relaxed because of external agglomeration economies? In a system of heterogeneous cities, we demonstrate that second-best land use policy consists of a tax on city creation and a ... Read more...

26 October 2011

Keywords: agglomeration externalities ; growth controls ; second-best policy ; systems of cities

Ethnic Inventors, Diversity and Innovation in the UK: Evidence from Patents Microdata

Ethnic inventors play important roles in US innovation systems, especially in high-tech regions like Silicon Valley. Do ‘ethnicity-innovation’ channels exist elsewhere? This paper investigates, using a new panel of UK pa... Read more...

11 October 2011

Keywords: ethnic inventors ; innovation ; patents ; cultural diversity ; diasporas ; cities

A Many-Country Model of Industrialization

We draw attention to the role of economic geography in explaining important cross-sectional facts which are difficult to account for in existing models of industrialization. By construction, closed-economy models that st... Read more...

Holger Breinlich and Alejandro Cuñat

26 September 2011

Keywords: industrialization ; economic geography ; international trade

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Does additional spending help urban schools an evaluation using boundary discontinuities.

Improvement of educational attainment in schools in urban, disadvantaged areas is an important priority for policy – particularly in countries like England which have a long tail at the bottom of the educational distribu... Read more...

8 September 2011

Keywords: urban schools ; education ; resources ;

27 August 2011

Keywords: urban schools ; education ; resources

History and industry location: Evidence from German airports

A central prediction of a large class of theoretical models is that industry location is not uniquely determined by fundamentals. Despite the theoretical prominence of this idea, there is little systematic evidence in su... Read more...

Stephen J. Redding, Daniel M. Sturm and Nikolaus Wolf

21 August 2011

Keywords: industry location ; economic geography ; german division ; german reunification

The Effects of Agglomeration on Wages: Evidence from the Micro-Level

This paper estimates individual wage equations in order to test two rival non-nested theories of economic agglomeration, namely New Economic Geography (NEG), as represented by the NEG wage equation and urban economic (UE... Read more...

Bernard Fingleton and Simonetta Longhi

Keywords: urban economics ; new economic geography ; household panel data

Does Cultural Diversity Help Innovation in Cities: Evidence from London Firms

London is one of the world’s major cities, and one of its most diverse. London’s cultural diversity is widely seen as a social asset, but there is little hard evidence on its importance for the city’s businesses. Theory ... Read more...

Neil Lee and Max Nathan

February 2011

Keywords: cities ; innovation ; entrepreneurship ; cultural diversity ; migration ; london

The Economics of Super-Diversity: Findings from British Cities, 2001-2006

British cities have a surprisingly long history of cultural diversity. Recently they have become significantly more multicultural, with ‘super-diversity’ emerging in many urban neighbourhoods. Public interest in these ch... Read more...

Keywords: cities ; demography ; migration ; culture ; cultural diversity ; super-diversity ; urban economies ; growth

The Long Term Impacts of Migration in British Cities: Diversity, Wages, Employment and Prices

British cities are becoming more culturally diverse, with migration a main driver. Is this growing diversity good for urban economies? This paper explores, using a new 16-year panel of UK cities. Over time, net migration... Read more...

Keywords: cities ; migration ; cultural diversity ; labour markets ; productivity ; urban economics

Evolving city systems

In urbanization and development.

Leading scholars in urban economics examine the data and definitions associated with the field, and look in-depth at the economic and social consequences of urbanization. Special focus is given to urban violence, and pla... Read more...

Henry G. Overman and Anthony J. Venables

28 October 2010

Keywords: urban ;

CEP Election Analysis 2010 - The complete Series, discussing research on some of the key policy battlegrounds of the 2010 General Election

Keywords: immigration ; crime ; education ; health ; banks ; finance ; jobs ; unemployment ; macroeconomics ; public finances ; urban renewal ; housing ; inequality ; climate change

Economic Geographers and the Limelight: The Reaction to the 2009 World Development Report

The reaction of economic geographers to the World Bank's World Development Report 2009 – Reshaping Economic Geography – has so far been a corporatist turf-protecting exercise. The report has been dismissed as the work of... Read more...

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

Self-Reinforcing Shocks: Evidence from a Resettlement Policy

i. A completely revised version of this paper is available as SERCDP0080, May 2011.... Read more...

Aki Kangasharju and Matti Sarvimäki

Keywords: economic geography ; agglomeration ; migration

Regional Manufacturing Wages: Dancing to the Tune of Trade Shocks

Firms generally choose to locate their production where profits are maximized. As costs affect profits, trade-offs between two marginal costs – employees’ wages and transport costs – may be important for decisions regard... Read more...

Filipe Lage de Sousa

Keywords: economic geography ; trade shocks ; manufacturing wages

Urban Renewal and Regional Growth: Muddled Objectives and Mixed Progress

Keywords: urban renewal ; housing ; growth

Predicting the Geography of House Prices

Prediction is difficult. In this paper we use panel data methods to make reasonably accurate shortterm ex-post predictions of house prices across 353 local authority areas in England. The issue of prediction over the lon... Read more...

Bernard Fingleton

February 2010

Keywords: new economic geography ; real estate prices ; spatial econometrics ; panel data ; prediction

Agglomeration Elasticities and Firm Heterogeneity

This paper estimates the relationship between agglomeration and multi factor productivity at the one digit industry level and by region using longitudinal firm level data for New Zealand. A key focus of the paper is on m... Read more...

Daniel J. Graham and David C. Maré

Keywords: agglomeration ; urban density ; productivity

The Impact of Aging and Technological Relatedness on Agglomeration Externalities: A Survival Analysis

We study localization, urbanization, and Jacobs’ externality effects on plant survival in Sweden (1970-2004). We focus on two questions: (1) do agglomeration externalities change with the age of plants? (2) using new inf... Read more...

Ron Boschma, Martin Henning and Frank Neffke

November 2009

Keywords: agglomeration externalities ; nursery cities ; cox regression ; aalen ; plant survival ; sweden

The Fluctuating Record of Economic Regeneration in England's Second-Order City Regions, 1984-2007

This study examines how far and in what way ‘Our cities are back’, as claimed by England’s Core Cities Group. It focuses on 1984-2007 employment changes for the eight Core Cities and their city regions: Birmingham, Brist... Read more...

Tony Champion and Alan Townsend

October 2009

Keywords: urban regeneration ; employment data ; city regions ; core cities ; england

Spatial Costs in a Monocentric City (And Implications for Agglomeration)

Using water supply as a model for a wider range of infrastructure services, the effect of a negative exponential density gradient on distribution costs is investigated for four monocentric urban development scenarios: (a... Read more...

Hugh B. Wenban-Smith

Keywords: urbanisation ; spatial analysis ; returns to scale ; water utilities

The Productivity Advantages of Large Cities: Distinguishing Agglomeration from Firm Selection

Firms are more productive on average in larger cities. Two explanations have been offered: agglomeration economies (larger cities promote interactions that increase productivity) and firm selection (larger cities toughen... Read more...

Pierre-Philippe Combes, Gilles Duranton, Laurent Gobillon, Diego Puga and Sébastien Roux

Keywords: agglomeration ; firm selection ; productivity ; cities

Analysing the Impact of Public Capital Stock Using the NEG Wage Equation: A Panel Data Approach

This paper examines the relationship between the level of public infrastructure and the level of productivity using panel data for the Spanish provinces over the period 1984-2004, a period which is particularly relevant ... Read more...

Bernard Fingleton and Miguel Gómez-Antonio

Keywords: spatial economics ; public infrastructure ; productivity ; panel data ; economic geography

Simulating Wages and House Prices Using the NEG

The paper incorporates house prices within an NEG framework leading to the spatial distributions of wages, prices and income. The model assumes that all expenditure goes to firms under a monopolistic competition market s... Read more...

Keywords: new economic geography ; real estate prices ; spatial econometrics

The Empirics of New Economic Geography

Although a rich and extensive body of theoretical research on new economic geography has emerged, empirical research remains comparatively less well developed. This paper reviews the existing empirical literature on the ... Read more...

Keywords: new economic geography ; market access ; industrial location ; multiple equilibria

Does Urbanisation Affect Rural Poverty? Evidence from Indian Districts

Although the high rate of urbanization and the high incidence of rural poverty are two distinct features of many developing countries, we still do not know the effects of the former on the latter. We address this issue b... Read more...

Massimiliano Calì and Carlo Menon

February 2009

Keywords: rural poverty ; urbanization ; indian districts ; india

Economic Geography: A Review of the Theoretical and Empirical Literature

This paper reviews the new economic geography literature, which accounts for the uneven distribution of economic activity across space in terms of a combination of love of variety preferences, increasing returns to scale... Read more...

January 2009

Keywords: new economic geography ; market access ; home market effect ; multiple equilibria

Survival of the Fittest in Cities: Agglomeration, Selection and Polarisation

Empirical studies consistently report that labour productivity and TFP rise with city size. The reason is that cities attract the most productive agents, select the best of them, and make the selected ones even more prod... Read more...

Kristian Behrens and Frédéric Robert-Nicoud

November 2008

Keywords: entrepreneur heterogeneity ; firm selection ; agglomeration ; income inequalities ; urbanization ; urban systems

Education and Income Inequality in the Regions of the European Union

This paper provides an empirical study of the determinants of income inequality across regions of the EU. Using the European Community Household Panel dataset for 102 regions over the period 1995-2000, it analyses how mi... Read more...

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Vassilis Tselios

Keywords: income inequality ; educational attainment ; educational inequality ; regions ; europe

Urban Growth Drivers in a Europe of Sticky People and Implicit Boundaries

We investigate urban GDP pc growth across the EU12 using data for functionally defined cities - rather than administrative regions. We test hypotheses on the role of human capital, EU integration and fragmentation of urb... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Stefano Magrini

Keywords: growth ; cities ; local public goods ; spatial adjustment ; local economic growth

Family Types and the Persistence of Regional Disparities in Europe

This paper examines the association between one of the most basic institutional forms, the family, and a series of demographic, educational, social, and economic indicators across regions in Europe. Using Emmanuel Todd’s... Read more...

Gilles Duranton, Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Richard Sandall

Keywords: institutions ; family types ; education ; social capital ; labor force participation ; economic wealth and dynamism ; regions ; europe

Why Capital does not Migrate to the South: A New Economic Geography Perspective

This paper explains why capital does not flow from the North to the South - the Lucas Paradox - with a New Economic Geography model that incorporates mobile capital, immobile labour, and productively heterogeneous firms.... Read more...

Jang Ping Thia

Keywords: firm heterogeneity ; capital mobility ; economic geography

Survival of the Fittest in Cities: Agglomeration, Selection, and Polarisation

October 2008

Urbanisation and Structural Transformation

This paper presents new evidence on urbanization using sub-county data for the United States from 1880-2000 and municipality data for Brazil from 1970-2000. We show that the two central stylized features of population gr... Read more...

Keywords: urbanisation ; economic development ; urban population ; rural population

Prediction Using Panel Data Regression with Spatial Random Effects

This paper considers some of the issues and difficulties relating to the use of spatial panel data regression in prediction, illustrated by the effects of mass immigration on wages and income levels in local authority ar... Read more...

September 2008

Keywords: panel data ; spatially correlated error components ; economic geography ; spatial econometrics

The Effect of Information and Communication Technologies on Urban Structure

The geographic concentration of economic activity occurs because transport costs for goods, people and ideas give individuals and organisations incentives to locate close to each other. Historically, all of these costs h... Read more...

Y Ioannides, Henry G. Overman, Esteban Rossi-Hansberg and Kurt Schmidheiny

Keywords: ict ; urban structure ; cross country data

History and Industry Location: Evidence from German Airports

A central prediction of a large class of theoretical models is that industry location is not necessarily uniquely determined by fundamentals. In these models, historical accident or expectations determine which of severa... Read more...

Economic Linkages Across Space

We develop a diagrammatic framework that can be used to study the economic linkages between regions or cities. Hitherto, such linkages have not been the primary focus of either the theoretical or empirical literatures. W... Read more...

Henry G. Overman, Patricia Rice and Anthony J. Venables

Keywords: spatial linkages ; urban systems ; new economic geography ; urban and regional policy

Urban Density and Pupil Attainment

We explore the association between urban density and pupil attainment using three cohorts of pupils in schooling in England. Although – as widely recognised – attainment in dense urban places is low on average, this is n... Read more...

Stephen Gibbons and Olmo Silva

Keywords: urban density and agglomeration ; school choice and competition ; pupil achievement

Firms in International Trade

Despite the fact that importing and exporting are extremely rare firm activities, economists generally devote little attention to the role of firms when discussing international trade. This paper summarizes key differenc... Read more...

Andrew B. Bernard, J. Bradford Jensen, Stephen J. Redding and Peter K. Schott

Keywords: economic geography ; international trade

Shifts in Economic Geography and their Causes

This paper analyses some of the forces that are changing the spatial distribution of activity in the world economy. It draws on the 'new economic geography' literature to argue the importance of increasing returns to sca... Read more...

December 2006

Keywords: economic geography ; urbanisation ; world economy ; productivity

Fat City: The Relationship Between Urban Sprawl and Obesity

We study the relationship between urban sprawl and obesity. Using data that tracks individuals over time, we find no evidence that urban sprawl causes obesity. We show that previous findings of a positive relationship mo... Read more...

Jean Eid, Henry G. Overman, Diego Puga and Matthew A. Turner

November 2006

Keywords: urban sprawl ; obesity ; selection effects

Causes of sprawl: a portrait from space

We study the extent to which US urban development is sprawling and what determines differences in sprawl across space. Using remote-sensing data to track the evolution of land use on a grid of 8.7 billion 30 x 30 metre c... Read more...

Marcy Burchfield, Henry G. Overman, Diego Puga and Matthew A. Turner

Keywords: economic geography ; urban development ; metropolitan growth ; transport infrastructure

The Review of Economic Studies:

Testing for localization using micro-geographic data.

To study the detailed location patterns of industries, and particularly the tendency for industries to cluster relative to overall manufacturing, we develop distance-based tests of localization. In contrast to previous s... Read more...

Gilles Duranton and Henry G. Overman

1 October 2005

The Log of Gravity

Although economists have long been aware of Jensen's inequality, many econometric applications have neglected an important implication of it: the standard practice of interpreting the parameters of log-linearized models ... Read more...

João Santos Silva and Silvana Tenreyro

Keywords: elasticities ; gravity equation ; heteroskedasticity ; jensen's inequality ; poisson regression ; preferential-trade agreements

Cities in the Developing World

Rapid urbanisation is a major feature of developing countries. Some 2 billion more people are likely to become city residents in the next 30 years, yet urbanisation has received little attention in the modern development... Read more...

Agglomeration and the Adjustment of the Spatial Economy

We consider the literatures on urban systems and New Economic Geography to examine questions concerning agglomeration and how areas respond to shocks to the economic environment. We first propose a diagrammatic framework... Read more...

Pierre-Philippe Combes, Gilles Duranton and Henry G. Overman

Keywords: urban systems ; new economic geography ; urban and regional policy ; diagrammatic exposition

The Costs of Remoteness: Evidence from German Division and Reunification

This paper exploits the division of Germany after the Second World War and the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990 as a natural experiment to provide evidence of the importance of market access for economic de... Read more...

Stephen J. Redding and Daniel M. Sturm

Keywords: market access ; economic geography ; german division ; german reunification

Evaluating Urban Transport Improvements: Cost Benefit Analysis in the Presence of Agglomeration and Income Taxation

There is a substantial empirical literature quantifying the positive relationship between city size and productivity. The paper draws out the implications of this productivity relationship for evaluations of urban transp... Read more...

September 2004

Keywords: agglomeration ; productivity ; urban transport

Is There a Market for Work Group Servers? Evaluating Market Level Demand Elasticities Using Micro and Macro Models

This paper contains an empirical analysis demand for “work-group” (or low-end) servers. Servers are at the centre of many US and EU anti-trust debates, including the Hewlett-Packard/Compaq merger and investigations into ... Read more...

Keywords: demand elasticities ; network servers ; computers ; anti-trust

Cities, Matching and the Productivity Gains of Agglomeration

The striking geographical concentration of economic activities suggests that there are substantial benefits to agglomeration. However, the nature of those benefits remains unclear. In this paper we take advantage of a ne... Read more...

Fredrik Andersson, Simon Burgess and Julia Lane

Keywords: urban productivity ; matching ; agglomeration

Zipf's Law for Cities: A Cross Country Investigation

This paper assesses the empirical validity of Zipf¿s Law for cities, using new data on 73 countries and two estimation methods ¿ OLS and the Hill estimator. With either estimator, we reject Zipf¿s Law far more often than... Read more...

Kwok Tong Soo

Keywords: cities ; zipf's law ; pareto distribution ; hill estimator

Economic geography and international inequality

This paper estimates a structural model of economic geography using cross-country data on per capita income, bilateral trade, and the relative price of manufacturing goods. We provide evidence that the geography of acces... Read more...

Stephen J. Redding and Anthony J. Venables

1 January 2004

Keywords: economic geography ; economic development ; international trade ; inequality ; globalisation ; wages

The Geography of UK International Trade

This paper examines how the geography of UK international trade has changed since the UK¿s accession to the European Economic Community using a newly constructed data set that gives a detailed breakdown of the UK¿s impor... Read more...

Henry G. Overman and L. Alan Winters

January 2004

Keywords: uk trade ; eec ; economic geography

Buzz: Face-to-Face Contact and the Urban Economy

This paper argues that existing models of urban concentrations are incomplete unless grounded in the most fundamental aspect of proximity; face-to-face contact. Face-to-face contact has four main features; it is an effic... Read more...

Michael Storper and Anthony J. Venables

December 2003

Keywords: agglomeration ; clustering ; urban economics ; face-to-face

Spatial Disparities in Developing Countries: Cities, Regions and International Trade

Spatial inequality in developing countries is due to the natural advantages of some regions relative to others and to the presence of agglomeration forces, leading to clustering of activity. This paper reviews and develo... Read more...

November 2003

Keywords: cities ; spatial disparities ; urbanisation ; developing countries

Communication Externalities in Cities

To identify communication externalities in French cities, we exploit a unique survey recording workplace communication of individual workers. Our hypothesis is that in larger and/or more educated cities, workers should c... Read more...

Sylvie Charlot and Gilles Duranton

Keywords: human capital ; cities ; communication externalities

Trade Shocks and Industrial Location: the Impact of EEC Accession on the UK

This paper combines detailed production data (from the ARD) with international trade data by port to examine the impact of accession to the EEC on the location of UK manufacturing. The paper has two main objectives. The ... Read more...

Keywords: uk manufacturing industry ; eec ; economic geography

Can We Learn Anything from Economic Geography Proper?

Abstract This paper considers the ways geographers (proper) and (geographical) economists approach the study of economic geography. It argues that there are two areas where the approach of the latter is more robust than ... Read more...

October 2003

Keywords: economic geography ; geographical economics ; regional science ; relational economic geography

Distance, Skill Deepening and Development: Will Peripheral Countries Ever Get Rich?

This paper models the relationship between countries' distance from global economic activity, endogenous investments in education, and economic development. Firms in remote locations pay greater trade costs on both expo... Read more...

Stephen J. Redding and Peter K. Schott

Keywords: economic geography ; human capital ; international inequality ; international trade

Explaining Cross-Country Export Performance: International Linkages and Internal Geography

This paper investigates the determinants of countries' export performance looking in particular at the role of international product market linkages. We begin with a novel decomposition of the growth in countries' expo... Read more...

September 2002

Keywords: economic development ; economic geography ; international trade

Factor Price Equalization in the UK?

This paper develops a general test of factor price equalization that is robust to unobserved regional productivity differences, unobserved region- industry factor quality differences and variation in production technolog... Read more...

Andrew B. Bernard, Stephen J. Redding, Peter K. Schott and Helen Simpson

Keywords: elative factor prices ; diversification cones ; technology ; economic geography

Globalization in History: A Geographical Perspective

This paper argues that a geographical perspectie is fundamental to understanding comparative economic development in the context of globalization. Central to this view is the role of agglomeration in productivity perform... Read more...

Nicholas Crafts and Anthony J. Venables

Keywords: globalization ; economic geography ; economic history

From Sectoral To Functional Urban Specialisation

We document and then develop a model explaining and relating changes in firms' organisation and in urban structure. Sharing of business services by headquarters and of sector-specific intermediates by production plants ... Read more...

Gilles Duranton and Diego Puga

September 2001

Keywords: functional specialisation ; cities ; business services ; headquarters

The Spatial Economy Cities, Regions, and International Trade

The authors show how a common approach that emphasizes the three-way interaction among increasing returns, transportation costs, and the movement of productive factors can be applied to a wide range of issues in urba... Read more...

Masahisa Fujita, Paul Krugman, and Anthony J. Venables

1 July 2001

Keywords: spatial economy ; economic geography

Economic Geography and International Inequality

This paper estimates a structural model of economic geography using cross-country data on per capita income, bilateral trade, and the relative price of manufacturing goods. More than 70% of the variation in per capita in... Read more...

Zipfs Law for Cities: An Empirical Examination

We use data for metro areas in the United States, from the US Census for 1900 û 1990, to test the validity of Zipf's Law for cities. Previous investigations are restricted to regressions of log size against log rank. In... Read more...

Y Ioannides and Henry G. Overman

November 2000

Keywords: urban growth ; zipf's law ; gibrat's law ; estimation of brownian motion

Spatial Evolution of the US Urban System

We test implications of economic geography models for location, size and growth of cities with US Census data for 1900 û 1990. Our tests involve non-parametric estimations of stochastic kernels for the distributions of c... Read more...

Keywords: urban growth ; spatial evolution ; economic geography

Nursery Cities: Urban Diversity, Process Innovation and the Life-Cycle of Products

A simple model of process innovation is proposed, where firms learn about their ideal production process by making prototypes. We build around this a dynamic general equilibrium model, and derive conditions under which d... Read more...

February 2000

Keywords: cities ; diversity ; specialisation ; innovation ; learning ; life-cycle

Internet Cluster Emergence

Internet development holds the promise of transmitting economic value across physical space at zero marginal cost. In such a 'weightless economy', what factors matter for the location of economic activity and thus for ... Read more...

Keywords: distribution dynamics ; economic geography ; internet ; location ; space ; time ; toepitz ; weightless economy

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220 Economics Essay Topics You Can Explore in Your Research

Updated 30 Aug 2024

Economics is one of the most important social sciences. As it discusses and studies the flow of value in our society, it impacts almost every aspect of our lives. It can also be effectively used to improve our modern society.

The list of economic essay topics is endless – the field focuses on multiple areas of human interactions on different scales. Choosing one of the economics topics for an essay relevant to your task and interesting to research can be hard. That’s why our essay writing service is here to help you.

💡 Tips for Choosing Interesting Economics Topics

Let’s review the main steps you can take to make the selection of topic ideas easier for you:

• Select the relevant field of study – economics is a broad field, so it is often divided into several subcategories, including micro- and macroeconomics, social economics, and many more. If you want to select relevant economics paper topics, first you need to determine the field you’re focusing on;
• Find something interesting to you – even the most interesting topics will not make for a good essay if they are not delivered well enough. Find something that you’re interested in learning more about and focus on economics essay questions connected to it;
• Make sure there are enough trustworthy data sources on the subject – like many other social studies, economics is often manipulated to prove a point or an agenda. Make sure the sources you use are relevant and trustworthy;
• Ensure you can keep the reader engaged – if most of your research will consist of raw data, it will most likely not be interesting to read. Make sure that the topic you choose is interesting and engaging enough for you to grasp the reader’s attention.

Among the main topics you can discuss in economics research are:

• Fundamental economics, cost to benefit analysis, and importance of decision-making;
• Macroeconomics , supply, and demand;
• Microeconomics, market structure, and strategies, competition;
• International economics, trade, market, and more;
• Personal economics, spending habits, personal investment;
• Social economics, class structure, the cultural impact of economics.

📈 List of Economics Essay Topics

These general topics explore the specifics of the field, its difference from other studies, and relevant questions in the modern state of this science.

• The Role of Cryptocurrencies in Modern Economics
• Impact of Globalization on Emerging Economies
• Behavioral Economics: How Psychology Influences Economic Decisions
• The Economics of Climate Change and Sustainable Development
• Universal Basic Income: Pros and Cons
• The Effect of Trade Wars on Global Economic Stability
• Gig Economy: Transforming Traditional Labor Markets
• Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence and Automation
• The Future of Work: Economic Perspectives on Telecommuting and Remote Work
• Income Inequality and Economic Growth: A Complex Relationship
• The Economics of Renewable Energy: Costs and Benefits
• Healthcare Economics: Analyzing the Cost-Effectiveness of Public Health Policies
• The Impact of Economic Sanctions on Targeted Countries
• Economic Strategies for Combating Poverty and Homelessness
• The Role of Central Banks in Managing Economic Crises
• Economic Analysis of the Student Loan Debt Crisis
• The Economics of Internet Privacy and Data Security
• Supply Chain Economics: Lessons from Global Disruptions
• The Role of Innovation and Technology in Economic Growth
• Economic Impacts of Immigration: A Balanced View

🌎 World Economics Essay Questions

• How do international trade agreements affect emerging economies?
• What are the economic impacts of climate change on global agriculture?
• How does the rise of China affect the global economic balance?
• What role does the World Bank play in shaping the economies of developing countries?
• How do economic policies in developed countries impact global poverty?
• What are the effects of global economic sanctions on the targeted nations?
• How does the digital economy influence global economic disparities?
• What are the economic consequences of Brexit for the European Union and the UK?
• How do multinational corporations influence economic policies in developing countries?
• What is the impact of global pandemics, like COVID-19, on international trade and economy?
• How does the global shift towards renewable energy sources affect oil-dependent economies?
• What are the economic challenges and opportunities in Africa's rapidly growing economies?
• How do remittances from migrants impact the economies of their home countries?
• What are the economic implications of the increasing global population?
• How does political instability in the Middle East affect global oil markets and economies?
• What is the role of emerging technologies in shaping the future of global finance?
• How do global economic inequalities impact international relations and security?
• What are the economic effects of international tourism on small island developing states?
• How do trade wars, particularly between the US and China, reshape global economic dynamics?
• What are the economic strategies for sustainable development in underdeveloped regions?

📊 Macroeconomics Essay Topics

Macroeconomics deals with economic systems as a whole. It is extremely important to discuss, as it can help to learn more about how well the system is performing and what can be done to improve it.

• Analyzing the Long-term Economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic
• The Role of Fiscal Policy in Managing Economic Recessions
• Inflation vs. Deflation: Causes, Consequences, and Control
• The Impact of Monetary Policy on Economic Growth
• Globalization and Its Effects on National Economies
• The Economics of Income Inequality in Developed Countries
• Understanding the Phillips Curve: Inflation and Unemployment
• The Role of Government Spending in Stimulating Economic Growth
• Exchange Rates and Their Impact on International Trade
• The Effects of National Debt on a Country's Economic Health
• Economic Indicators and Their Role in Policy Making
• The Relationship Between Consumer Confidence and Economic Performance
• The Impact of Oil Prices on the Global Economy
• Quantitative Easing: Benefits and Risks
• The Economics of Climate Change Policies in Developed Nations
• Housing Markets and Their Influence on the Economy
• The Role of Central Banks in Modern Economies
• Supply-Side Economics: Theory and Practice
• The Impact of Technological Innovation on Economic Growth
• Demographic Changes and Their Macroeconomic Implications

📉 Microeconomics Essay Topics

Microeconomics, on the other hand, deals with the economy on an individual scale. Discussing the importance of personal decision making and how it impacts the system is actually just as important as paying attention to the large scale, so let’s take a look at the topics you can explore:

• The Impact of Consumer Behavior on Market Demand
• Price Elasticity of Demand: Analysis in Different Markets
• The Role of Competition in Shaping Market Outcomes
• Monopolies and Oligopolies: Their Impact on Consumers and Prices
• Behavioral Economics: How Irrational Behaviors Affect Economic Decisions
• The Economics of Labor Markets and Wage Determination
• Supply Chain Economics: The Microeconomic Perspective
• The Impact of Advertising on Consumer Preferences and Market Trends
• Game Theory and Its Application in Competitive Business Strategies
• The Economics of Healthcare: Demand, Supply, and Pricing
• Environmental Economics: The Cost of Pollution and Its Microeconomic Impacts
• The Role of Government in Market Failures: Subsidies, Taxes, and Regulations
• Resource Allocation in Different Economic Systems
• The Economics of Education: Human Capital and Labor Market Outcomes
• The Impact of Technological Change on Small Businesses
• Consumer Choice Theory and Its Implications for Marketing
• Risk and Uncertainty in Microeconomic Decision-Making
• The Microeconomics of Urban Development and Housing Markets
• The Role of Information Asymmetry in Market Transactions
• The Economics of Agriculture: Supply and Demand in Food Markets

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🏥 Healthcare Economics Essay Topics

• The Economic Impact of Universal Healthcare Systems vs. Private Healthcare Systems
• Cost-Benefit Analysis of Public Health Campaigns
• The Role of Health Insurance in Shaping Healthcare Economics
• Economic Implications of Aging Populations on Healthcare Systems
• The Impact of Pharmaceutical Patents on Drug Prices and Accessibility
• Healthcare Expenditure: A Comparison Between Developed and Developing Countries
• The Economics of Mental Health Care and Its Funding
• Analyzing the Cost-Effectiveness of Preventive Medicine
• The Role of Technology in Reducing Healthcare Costs
• Economic Analysis of the Opioid Crisis in the United States
• Healthcare Economics in the Context of a Pandemic
• The Impact of Lifestyle Diseases on Healthcare Systems
• Economic Challenges in Providing Rural Healthcare
• The Effects of Healthcare Policy Reforms on Service Delivery
• The Role of Private Sector Investment in Healthcare
• Analyzing the Price Elasticity of Demand in Healthcare
• The Economics of Emergency Medical Services and Critical Care
• Healthcare Workforce Economics: Challenges and Solutions
• The Impact of Medical Tourism on Domestic Healthcare Economics
• Evaluating the Economic Efficiency of Telemedicine Services

Consumerism Essay Topics

• The Impact of Consumerism on Global Environmental Sustainability
• Consumer Culture: Its Evolution and Impact on Society
• The Psychology Behind Consumer Buying Behavior
• The Effects of Advertising and Media on Consumer Choices
• Ethical Consumerism: Balancing Profit and Social Responsibility
• The Role of Branding in Modern Consumerism
• Consumerism and Its Impact on Personal Debt and Financial Health
• Fast Fashion: Consumerism and Its Environmental Footprint
• The Influence of Social Media on Consumer Trends and Behaviors
• Minimalism as an Antidote to Consumerism: Pros and Cons
• The Relationship Between Consumerism and the Throwaway Culture
• Consumerism in the Digital Age: Online Shopping and Its Impacts
• The Effects of Globalization on Consumerism and Local Cultures
• Consumer Rights and Protection: A Historical Perspective
• The Impact of Consumerism on Mental Health and Well-being
• Sustainable Consumerism: Is It Achievable in a Capitalist Society?
• The Role of Government in Regulating Consumer Markets
• Consumerism in Developing Countries: Trends and Challenges
• The Evolution of Consumerism in the 21st Century
• The Intersection of Consumerism and Technological Advancements

💰 Finance Paper Topics

• The Impact of Cryptocurrency on Traditional Financial Systems
• Behavioral Finance: Understanding the Psychology of Investing
• The Role of Fintech in Shaping the Future of Banking
• Corporate Social Responsibility in Financial Decision-Making
• The Effects of Interest Rate Changes on the Economy
• Risk Management in Financial Institutions
• The Global Impact of the US Federal Reserve's Monetary Policy
• Sustainable Finance: Investing in Environmental and Social Governance (ESG)
• The Evolution of International Financial Markets
• Financial Inclusion: Strategies for Bridging the Gap in Developing Countries
• The Role of Credit Ratings in Financial Markets
• Impact of Financial Regulations on Banking Sector
• Analysis of Stock Market Bubbles and Crashes
• The Future of Digital Banking and Online Financial Services
• Private Equity and Venture Capital: Their Role in Economic Growth
• The Economics of Debt: National and International Perspectives
• Financial Derivatives: Uses and Controversies
• The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Financial Services
• Microfinance and Its Impact on Poverty Alleviation
• The Challenges of Pension Fund Management in an Aging Society

✏️ Socio-Economic Essay Topics

• The Impact of Economic Inequality on Social Mobility
• The Role of Education in Bridging the Socio-Economic Divide
• Gender Disparities in the Workplace: Economic and Social Implications
• The Effects of Urbanization on Socio-Economic Development
• Social Entrepreneurship: Combining Economic Goals with Social Impact
• The Relationship Between Poverty and Crime Rates
• Economic Policies and Their Impact on Social Welfare
• The Socio-Economic Challenges of Aging Populations
• Income Inequality and Its Impact on Health Outcomes
• The Role of Technology in Shaping Socio-Economic Trends
• Child Labor: Socio-Economic Causes and Consequences
• The Impact of Globalization on Local Cultures and Economies
• Socio-Economic Factors Influencing Voter Behavior
• The Economics of Immigration: Social and Economic Perspectives
• Socio-Economic Implications of Climate Change
• The Digital Divide: Socio-Economic Impacts of Internet Access
• Racial and Ethnic Economic Disparities in Urban Areas
• The Socio-Economic Effects of War and Conflict
• Socio-Economic Determinants of Health in Developing Countries
• The Role of Government in Addressing Socio-Economic Inequalities

📖 Economic History Topics

• The Economic Consequences of the Industrial Revolution
• The Great Depression: Causes and Global Impact
• The Role of Trade and Commerce in the Ancient World
• Economic Factors Leading to the American Revolution
• The History of the Gold Standard and Its Economic Impact
• The Rise and Fall of the Roman Economy
• The Economic Implications of European Colonialism
• The Silk Road: Economic and Cultural Exchange
• The Impact of the Agricultural Revolution on Societal Development
• Mercantilism and Its Role in Shaping Modern Economics
• The Economic Causes and Consequences of World War II
• The Bretton Woods System and the Post-War Global Economy
• The History of the Global Oil Economy
• The Economic Impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
• The Evolution of Central Banking and Its Role in Economic Stabilization
• The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997: Causes and Effects
• The Economic History of the European Union
• The Role of Innovation and Technology in Economic Growth Through History
• The Economic Impacts of the Cold War
• The History and Development of Global Trade Agreements

💲 Tax Topics for an Essay

• The Economic Impact of Progressive vs. Regressive Tax Systems
• Tax Evasion and Avoidance: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions
• The Role of Taxation in Income Redistribution
• Comparative Analysis of Tax Systems in Different Countries
• The Impact of Corporate Taxation on Business Decisions and Growth
• Carbon Taxes and Their Effectiveness in Combating Climate Change
• The History and Evolution of Income Tax
• Value-Added Tax (VAT): Pros and Cons
• Tax Incentives for Small Businesses: Benefits and Drawbacks
• The Relationship Between Tax Policies and Economic Growth
• Digital Taxation: Taxing the Tech Giants
• The Ethics of Taxation: Balancing Government Needs and Taxpayer Rights
• Property Taxes and Their Impact on Housing Markets
• Tax Havens: Economic and Legal Implications
• The Effect of Sales Taxes on Consumer Behavior
• Tax Reforms: Case Studies and Their Outcomes
• The Role of Taxes in Healthcare Financing
• Estate Taxes and Wealth Distribution
• The Impact of Taxation on Investment and Savings
• Sin Taxes on Alcohol and Tobacco: Economic and Social Perspectives

Human Development Essay Topics

• The Role of Education in Human Development
• Impact of Early Childhood Development on Later Life Outcomes
• Gender Inequality and Its Effects on Human Development
• The Influence of Family Structure on Child Development
• Economic Growth and Its Impact on Human Development Indices
• The Role of Nutrition in Cognitive and Physical Development
• Cultural Influences on Personality and Identity Formation
• The Impact of Technology on Adolescent Development
• Mental Health and Its Importance in Human Development
• Social Policy and Its Effects on Vulnerable Populations
• The Role of Play in Child Development
• Adolescent Brain Development and Behavior
• The Effects of Poverty on Human Development
• The Impact of Globalization on Cultural Identity and Development
• Environmental Factors and Their Influence on Human Growth
• The Role of Language in Cognitive Development
• The Impact of War and Conflict on Children's Development
• Social Media and Its Influence on Youth Development
• The Role of Community in Shaping Individual Development
• Human Development and Disability: Challenges and Opportunities

Final thoughts

In summary, this list of economics essay topics covers a lot of important areas. From big-picture issues like world economies to smaller, everyday things like how we make choices about buying stuff, each topic helps us understand more about how money and business affect our lives and the world. Writing essays on these topics isn't just about schoolwork; it's also a way for students to really get into how economics works and how it touches everything we do. By studying these topics, students aren't just learning; they're getting ready to be smart and thoughtful members of society who understand the big economic issues that we all face. Selecting compelling economics essay topics can be challenging, but if you need help, you can always find a service to write my essay and ensure a well-structured and insightful paper.

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• Why don’t women use artificial intelligence?

Even when in the same jobs, men are much more likely to turn to the tech

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B e more productive . That is how Chat GPT , a generative-artificial-intelligence tool from Open AI , sells itself to workers . But despite industry hopes that the technology will boost productivity across the workforce, not everyone is on board. According to two recent studies, women use Chat GPT between 16 and 20 percentage points less than their male peers, even when they are employed in the same jobs or read the same subject.

The first study, published as a working paper in June, explores Chat GPT at work. Anders Humlum of the University of Chicago and Emilie Vestergaard of the University of Copenhagen surveyed 100,000 Danes across 11 professions in which the technology could save workers time, including journalism, software-developing and teaching. The researchers asked respondents how often they turned to Chat GPT and what might keep them from adopting it. By exploiting Denmark’s extensive, hooked-up record-keeping, they were able to connect the answers with personal information, including income, wealth and education level.

Across all professions, women were less likely to use Chat GPT than men who worked in the same industry (see chart 1). For example, only a third of female teachers used it for work, compared with half of male teachers. Among software developers, almost two-thirds of men used it while less than half of women did. The gap shrank only slightly, to 16 percentage points, when directly comparing people in the same firms working on similar tasks. As such, the study concludes that a lack of female confidence may be in part to blame: women who did not use AI were more likely than men to highlight that they needed training   to use the technology.

Another potential explanation for the gender imbalance comes from a survey of 486 students by Daniel Carvajal at Aalto University and Catalina Franco and Siri Isaksson at the Norwegian School of Economics ( NHH ). It also found a gender gap: female students enrolled in the NHH ’s only undergraduate programme were 18 percentage points less likely to use Chat GPT often. When the researchers separated students by admission grades, it became clear that the gap reflected the behaviour of mid- and high-performing women (see chart 2). Low performers were almost as likely as men to use the technology.

Why might this be? The researchers probed what was going on with some clever follow-up questions. They asked students whether they would use Chat GPT if their professor forbade it, and received a similar distribution of answers. However, in the context of explicit approval, everyone, including the better-performing women, reported that they would make use of the technology. In other words, the high-achieving women appeared to impose a ban on themselves. “It’s the ‘good girl’ thing,” reckons Ms Isaksson. “It’s this idea that ‘I have to go through this pain, I have to do it on my own and I shouldn’t cheat and take short-cuts’.”

A lack of experience with AI could carry a cost when students enter the labour market. In August the researchers added a survey of 1,143 hiring managers to their study, revealing that managers value high-performing women with AI expertise 8% more than those without. This sort of premium does not exist for men, suggesting that there are rewards for women who are willing to relax their self-imposed ban.

Tera Allas of McKinsey, a consultancy, worries that by the time AI is firmly embedded into modern working life, it might be designed to appeal more to men, who are its main users—potentially shutting women out in the long term. But not everyone is as concerned. Despite the fact that the early internet was dominated by men, for example, young American women were more online than their male counterparts by 2005. On top of this, Danielle Li of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology notes that the studies do not actually show whether men’s current Chat GPT use translates into better or more productive work. At the moment, the technology may be more of a digital toy, she says. Perhaps, then, high-achieving women are simply better at avoiding distraction. ■

For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, finance and markets, sign up to  Money Talks , our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.

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This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “A new gender gap”

Finance & economics August 24th 2024

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Economics JIW - Tips for Choosing a Topic: Home

Choosing a topic.

Choosing a topic that can answer an economic research question is challenging.  Some tips:

•  Ripped from the headlines rarely makes a good economic paper.  You will be using data to determine causation or correlation.  Sometimes a similar event can be used.  Topics such as artificial intelligence may make a good policy paper but not a good economic one due to lack of data.
• Literature Review: Your JIW should use primarily scholarly sources.  Start with Econlit (the database of the American Economic Association).  Econlit indexes major journals, working papers, conference proceedings, dissertations, and chapters in critical books. It takes a long time for scholarly literature to appear.   Preprints are called working papers in economics and major ones are indexed in Econlit.  Y ou are your own research team and have limited time.  Many articles are written over a couple of years and involve many people gathering and cleaning the data. Some starting places: see https://libguides.princeton.edu/econliterature/gettingstarted
• Outside of finance and some macroeconomic data, most data will not have many points in time.  Data determines the methods used .   While a linear regression can be great for time series data, it is likely not what you will use for survey data.
• Longitudinal or panel study :  same group of individuals is interviewed at intervals over a period of time.  This can be very useful to observe changes over time. Keep in mind when using a long running longitudinal dataset that the panel generally is not adding new participants so may not reflect today’s demographics.
• Cross-sectional study :  data from particular subjects are obtained only once.  While you are studying different individuals each time, you are looking at individuals with similar demographic characteristics.  Demography is typically rebalanced to reflect the population.
• Summary statistics : aggregated counts of survey or administrative data.
• Typically around a 2 year time lag from the time the survey data is collected to the time of release.  The Economic Census and Census of Agriculture take about 4 years for all data to be released.  Many surveys never release the microdata.
• Very little subnational data is available and is often restricted when available.   State level macro data for the United States is more prevalent.  City level data is often a case study or only available for very large cities.
• Many micro-level datasets are restricted. It is not uncommon to wait a year before getting permission or denial to use the data.  Each organization has its own rules.
• Historical data in electronic format prior to 1950 is rare. Most governmental links provide current data only.
• What is measured changes over time .  Do not assume modern concepts were tracked in the past.  Definitions of indicators often change over time.
• Data cannot be made more frequent.  Many items are collected annually or even once a decade.  Major macroeconomic indicators such as GDP tend to be quarterly but some countries may only estimate annually. 
• What exists for one country may not exist for another country. Data is generally inconsistent across borders .
• Documentation is typically in the native language .
• Always look at the methodology. The methodology section is one of the most important parts of the paper. Someone should be able to replicate your work. Describe the dataset and its population. Describe how the data was subset, any filters used, and any adjustment methods. While you are likely not trying to publish in American Economic Review  or Journal of Finance , these are the gold standards.  See how they layout the articles and in particular the methodology and data sections.
• The basic question to ask when looking for economic data is " who cares about what i am studying ?"  Unfortunately, the answer may be no one. Ideally, look for an organization that is concerned with your research as part of its mission. Examples include the International Labor Organization or the Bureau of Labor Statistics focusing on labor research; the International Monetary Fund or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System focusing on monetary and fiscal concerns; the World Bank focusing on development; and the World Health Organization focusing on health. This does not mean these organizations collect data on all topics related to that field.
• Find a topic for which there is literature and data but allows room to add a contribution.  Topics such as sports and music are popular due to personal interests but may not make good research topics due to lack of data and overuse.

   More tips:

• Data is typically not adjusted for inflation.  It is usually presented in current (nominal) currency.  This means the numbers as they originally appeared.  When data has been adjusted for inflation (constant or real), a base year such as 2020 or 1990 will be shown.  If a base year is not provided, then data is current and therefore not adjusted for inflation.  If given a choice, choose current dollars.  Data is often derived from different datasets and many will use different base years.  Adjust everything at the end.  It is easier than doing reverse math!
• While most datasets are consistent within the dataset for currency used such as all in US Dollars or Euro or Japanese Yen or each item in local currency, some will mix and match.  LCU is a common abbreviation meaning local currency units. Consider looking at percent changes rather than actual values.  If adjusting use the exchange rate for each period of time, not the latest one.
• Economic indicators may be either seasonally adjusted or not seasonally adjusted.  This is very common for employment and retail sales.   Unless something says it is seasonally adjusted, it is not.  Be consistent and note in methodology.

Librarians are here to help!  Librarians can help to devise a feasible topic, assist with the literature search, and choose appropriate data.  Your data may fall into multiple categories.  Think of the primary aspect of your topic in terms of first contact.  Do not email librarians individually.  If unsure who to contact either put all that apply on same email or email just one.  If that person is not the best, they will refer you.  

Bobray Bordelon Economics, Finance, & Data Librarian   [email protected]

Charissa Jefferson

Labor Librarian [email protected]

Mary Carter Finance and Operations Research Librarian [email protected]

Data workshops

• Environmental and energy data  (Bordelon), 9/23/2024  - 7:30-8:50 pm
• Health, Crime and other Socioeconomic Data  (Bordelon), 9/23/2024 and 10/02/2024 - 3-4:20 pm 
• Macroeconomics and trade data  (Bordelon), 9/25/2024 and 9/30/2024 - 3-4:20 pm
• Finance data  (Carter), 9/23/2024 and 9/25/2024 - 3-4:20 pm
• Labor and education data  (Jefferson), 9/23/2024 and 9/25/2024 - 3-4:20 pm

Workshops listed twice have the same content and are done as an opportunity to fit your schedule.  While you must attend at least one data workshop, it is wise to attend more than one.  If in a certificate program, with the exception of political economy which has to be incorporated into your JIW, other programs have different requirements which are typically for your senior year.  As an example, if in finance, if you choose not to explore a finance topic this year you will still need to incorporate in your senior theses so try and attend a finance workshop in addition to your topical workshop for your JIW since these are intended to help you for your time at Princeton and both the JIW but also the senior thesis.

• Last Updated: Aug 28, 2024 9:32 AM
• URL: https://libguides.princeton.edu/ECOJIWTopics

Your Article Library

Essay on economic geography (500 words).

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Essay on Economic Geography!

Geography has become an extremely varied and versatile subject and its area of study has grown a great deal since its inception.

The concepts of place names, natural environment or influence of natural environment on man’s activity have become old and unacceptable notions in the light of the new and expanded concepts of geography.

The present-day geography is the study of spatial variations on the earth surface; thus, it deals with relationships among spatial variables and can be termed as spatial or areal science. Among main branches of geography, Economic Geography is the highly developed branch.

Although it is a branch of Human Geography, but now has a distinct status in geographical studies and deals with areal variations on the earth’s surface in man’s economic activities. Among the various fields of geography, economic geography has experienced remarkable changes within past fifty years, resulting in diverse specialised branches, viz., geography of agriculture, industry, transportation, marketing, resources, etc.

Economic geography deals with the distribution of economic activities and with the factors and processes affecting their spatial occurrence. Over the last five decades, the character of economic geography has changed, initially shifting its emphasis from description – amassing facts about production in different parts of the world – to explanation, from environmental determinism to economic deter­minism.

Both these changes can be related to the inclusion of Neo-classical Economics into economic geography, with its mechanical assumptions about Economic Man and Optimum Location and has led to important fields of study, such as Industrial Location Theory and Regional Science. More recently, however, a Behaviourial Approach has been developed with its focus on the decision-maker.

During last three decades, the focus of economic geography has moved to:

i. The nature and causes of development and underdevelopment, putting the mode of production at the centre, and stressing the interrelationships between the less and more developed worlds;

ii. The link between economic systems and geography, particularly in interpre­tations of the spatial impacts of capitalism and its role in the development of the world economy;

iii. The impact of technological changes and the construction of new industrial spaces;

iv. The use of discursive, qualitative, and realist explanations that recognise that each economic agglomeration and development is locally embedded in its peculiar socio-institutional context;

v. The dimensions of class, race, and gender in economic systems, stressing, and sometimes challenging, the way economic systems depend on discrimi­nation on the basis of these three categories;

vi. ‘Non-economic’ forces — cultures, institutions, and social practices — that are central to economic process;

vii. New explanations have been given for the location of economic activity, based on the assumptions of economic man and optimisation;

viii. Behavioral approach has modified the ideas, with the introduction of the concept of the decision-maker and the satisfier; and

iv. The concept of sustainable development in resource use; etc.

All these areas of enquiry have contributed to a philosophy of economic geography and also helped in regional development and planning.

Related Articles:

• Geography Essay: Essay on Geography (2495 Words)
• Economic Geography: Special Status to Economic Geography (with 13 reasons)

Economic Geography

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Key things to know about U.S. election polling in 2024

Confidence in U.S. public opinion polling was shaken by errors in 2016 and 2020. In both years’ general elections, many polls underestimated the strength of Republican candidates, including Donald Trump. These errors laid bare some real limitations of polling.

In the midterms that followed those elections, polling performed better . But many Americans remain skeptical that it can paint an accurate portrait of the public’s political preferences.

Restoring people’s confidence in polling is an important goal, because robust and independent public polling has a critical role to play in a democratic society. It gathers and publishes information about the well-being of the public and about citizens’ views on major issues. And it provides an important counterweight to people in power, or those seeking power, when they make claims about “what the people want.”

The challenges facing polling are undeniable. In addition to the longstanding issues of rising nonresponse and cost, summer 2024 brought extraordinary events that transformed the presidential race . The good news is that people with deep knowledge of polling are working hard to fix the problems exposed in 2016 and 2020, experimenting with more data sources and interview approaches than ever before. Still, polls are more useful to the public if people have realistic expectations about what surveys can do well – and what they cannot.

With that in mind, here are some key points to know about polling heading into this year’s presidential election.

Probability sampling (or “random sampling”). This refers to a polling method in which survey participants are recruited using random sampling from a database or list that includes nearly everyone in the population. The pollster selects the sample. The survey is not open for anyone who wants to sign up.

Online opt-in polling (or “nonprobability sampling”). These polls are recruited using a variety of methods that are sometimes referred to as “convenience sampling.” Respondents come from a variety of online sources such as ads on social media or search engines, websites offering rewards in exchange for survey participation, or self-enrollment. Unlike surveys with probability samples, people can volunteer to participate in opt-in surveys.

Nonresponse and nonresponse bias. Nonresponse is when someone sampled for a survey does not participate. Nonresponse bias occurs when the pattern of nonresponse leads to error in a poll estimate. For example, college graduates are more likely than those without a degree to participate in surveys, leading to the potential that the share of college graduates in the resulting sample will be too high.

Mode of interview. This refers to the format in which respondents are presented with and respond to survey questions. The most common modes are online, live telephone, text message and paper. Some polls use more than one mode.

Weighting. This is a statistical procedure pollsters perform to make their survey align with the broader population on key characteristics like age, race, etc. For example, if a survey has too many college graduates compared with their share in the population, people without a college degree are “weighted up” to match the proper share.

How are election polls being conducted?

Pollsters are making changes in response to the problems in previous elections. As a result, polling is different today than in 2016. Most U.S. polling organizations that conducted and publicly released national surveys in both 2016 and 2022 (61%) used methods in 2022 that differed from what they used in 2016 . And change has continued since 2022.

One change is that the number of active polling organizations has grown significantly, indicating that there are fewer barriers to entry into the polling field. The number of organizations that conduct national election polls more than doubled between 2000 and 2022.

This growth has been driven largely by pollsters using inexpensive opt-in sampling methods. But previous Pew Research Center analyses have demonstrated how surveys that use nonprobability sampling may have errors twice as large , on average, as those that use probability sampling.

The second change is that many of the more prominent polling organizations that use probability sampling – including Pew Research Center – have shifted from conducting polls primarily by telephone to using online methods, or some combination of online, mail and telephone. The result is that polling methodologies are far more diverse now than in the past.

(For more about how public opinion polling works, including a chapter on election polls, read our short online course on public opinion polling basics .)

All good polling relies on statistical adjustment called “weighting,” which makes sure that the survey sample aligns with the broader population on key characteristics. Historically, public opinion researchers have adjusted their data using a core set of demographic variables to correct imbalances between the survey sample and the population.

But there is a growing realization among survey researchers that weighting a poll on just a few variables like age, race and gender is insufficient for getting accurate results. Some groups of people – such as older adults and college graduates – are more likely to take surveys, which can lead to errors that are too sizable for a simple three- or four-variable adjustment to work well. Adjusting on more variables produces more accurate results, according to Center studies in 2016 and 2018 .

A number of pollsters have taken this lesson to heart. For example, recent high-quality polls by Gallup and The New York Times/Siena College adjusted on eight and 12 variables, respectively. Our own polls typically adjust on 12 variables . In a perfect world, it wouldn’t be necessary to have that much intervention by the pollster. But the real world of survey research is not perfect.

Predicting who will vote is critical – and difficult. Preelection polls face one crucial challenge that routine opinion polls do not: determining who of the people surveyed will actually cast a ballot.

Roughly a third of eligible Americans do not vote in presidential elections , despite the enormous attention paid to these contests. Determining who will abstain is difficult because people can’t perfectly predict their future behavior – and because many people feel social pressure to say they’ll vote even if it’s unlikely.

No one knows the profile of voters ahead of Election Day. We can’t know for sure whether young people will turn out in greater numbers than usual, or whether key racial or ethnic groups will do so. This means pollsters are left to make educated guesses about turnout, often using a mix of historical data and current measures of voting enthusiasm. This is very different from routine opinion polls, which mostly do not ask about people’s future intentions.

When major news breaks, a poll’s timing can matter. Public opinion on most issues is remarkably stable, so you don’t necessarily need a recent poll about an issue to get a sense of what people think about it. But dramatic events can and do change public opinion , especially when people are first learning about a new topic. For example, polls this summer saw notable changes in voter attitudes following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. Polls taken immediately after a major event may pick up a shift in public opinion, but those shifts are sometimes short-lived. Polls fielded weeks or months later are what allow us to see whether an event has had a long-term impact on the public’s psyche.

How accurate are polls?

The answer to this question depends on what you want polls to do. Polls are used for all kinds of purposes in addition to showing who’s ahead and who’s behind in a campaign. Fair or not, however, the accuracy of election polling is usually judged by how closely the polls matched the outcome of the election.

By this standard, polling in 2016 and 2020 performed poorly. In both years, state polling was characterized by serious errors. National polling did reasonably well in 2016 but faltered in 2020.

In 2020, a post-election review of polling by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) found that “the 2020 polls featured polling error of an unusual magnitude: It was the highest in 40 years for the national popular vote and the highest in at least 20 years for state-level estimates of the vote in presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial contests.”

How big were the errors? Polls conducted in the last two weeks before the election suggested that Biden’s margin over Trump was nearly twice as large as it ended up being in the final national vote tally.

Errors of this size make it difficult to be confident about who is leading if the election is closely contested, as many U.S. elections are .

Pollsters are rightly working to improve the accuracy of their polls. But even an error of 4 or 5 percentage points isn’t too concerning if the purpose of the poll is to describe whether the public has favorable or unfavorable opinions about candidates , or to show which issues matter to which voters. And on questions that gauge where people stand on issues, we usually want to know broadly where the public stands. We don’t necessarily need to know the precise share of Americans who say, for example, that climate change is mostly caused by human activity. Even judged by its performance in recent elections, polling can still provide a faithful picture of public sentiment on the important issues of the day.

The 2022 midterms saw generally accurate polling, despite a wave of partisan polls predicting a broad Republican victory. In fact, FiveThirtyEight found that “polls were more accurate in 2022 than in any cycle since at least 1998, with almost no bias toward either party.” Moreover, a handful of contrarian polls that predicted a 2022 “red wave” largely washed out when the votes were tallied. In sum, if we focus on polling in the most recent national election, there’s plenty of reason to be encouraged.

Compared with other elections in the past 20 years, polls have been less accurate when Donald Trump is on the ballot. Preelection surveys suffered from large errors – especially at the state level – in 2016 and 2020, when Trump was standing for election. But they performed reasonably well in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, when he was not.

During the 2016 campaign, observers speculated about the possibility that Trump supporters might be less willing to express their support to a pollster – a phenomenon sometimes described as the “shy Trump effect.” But a committee of polling experts evaluated five different tests of the “shy Trump” theory and turned up little to no evidence for each one . Later, Pew Research Center and, in a separate test, a researcher from Yale also found little to no evidence in support of the claim.

Instead, two other explanations are more likely. One is about the difficulty of estimating who will turn out to vote. Research has found that Trump is popular among people who tend to sit out midterms but turn out for him in presidential election years. Since pollsters often use past turnout to predict who will vote, it can be difficult to anticipate when irregular voters will actually show up.

The other explanation is that Republicans in the Trump era have become a little less likely than Democrats to participate in polls . Pollsters call this “partisan nonresponse bias.” Surprisingly, polls historically have not shown any particular pattern of favoring one side or the other. The errors that favored Democratic candidates in the past eight years may be a result of the growth of political polarization, along with declining trust among conservatives in news organizations and other institutions that conduct polls.

Whatever the cause, the fact that Trump is again the nominee of the Republican Party means that pollsters must be especially careful to make sure all segments of the population are properly represented in surveys.

The real margin of error is often about double the one reported. A typical election poll sample of about 1,000 people has a margin of sampling error that’s about plus or minus 3 percentage points. That number expresses the uncertainty that results from taking a sample of the population rather than interviewing everyone . Random samples are likely to differ a little from the population just by chance, in the same way that the quality of your hand in a card game varies from one deal to the next.

The problem is that sampling error is not the only kind of error that affects a poll. Those other kinds of error, in fact, can be as large or larger than sampling error. Consequently, the reported margin of error can lead people to think that polls are more accurate than they really are.

There are three other, equally important sources of error in polling: noncoverage error , where not all the target population has a chance of being sampled; nonresponse error, where certain groups of people may be less likely to participate; and measurement error, where people may not properly understand the questions or misreport their opinions. Not only does the margin of error fail to account for those other sources of potential error, putting a number only on sampling error implies to the public that other kinds of error do not exist.

Several recent studies show that the average total error in a poll estimate may be closer to twice as large as that implied by a typical margin of sampling error. This hidden error underscores the fact that polls may not be precise enough to call the winner in a close election.

Other important things to remember

Transparency in how a poll was conducted is associated with better accuracy . The polling industry has several platforms and initiatives aimed at promoting transparency in survey methodology. These include AAPOR’s transparency initiative and the Roper Center archive . Polling organizations that participate in these organizations have less error, on average, than those that don’t participate, an analysis by FiveThirtyEight found .

Participation in these transparency efforts does not guarantee that a poll is rigorous, but it is undoubtedly a positive signal. Transparency in polling means disclosing essential information, including the poll’s sponsor, the data collection firm, where and how participants were selected, modes of interview, field dates, sample size, question wording, and weighting procedures.

There is evidence that when the public is told that a candidate is extremely likely to win, some people may be less likely to vote . Following the 2016 election, many people wondered whether the pervasive forecasts that seemed to all but guarantee a Hillary Clinton victory – two modelers put her chances at 99% – led some would-be voters to conclude that the race was effectively over and that their vote would not make a difference. There is scientific research to back up that claim: A team of researchers found experimental evidence that when people have high confidence that one candidate will win, they are less likely to vote. This helps explain why some polling analysts say elections should be covered using traditional polling estimates and margins of error rather than speculative win probabilities (also known as “probabilistic forecasts”).

National polls tell us what the entire public thinks about the presidential candidates, but the outcome of the election is determined state by state in the Electoral College . The 2000 and 2016 presidential elections demonstrated a difficult truth: The candidate with the largest share of support among all voters in the United States sometimes loses the election. In those two elections, the national popular vote winners (Al Gore and Hillary Clinton) lost the election in the Electoral College (to George W. Bush and Donald Trump). In recent years, analysts have shown that Republican candidates do somewhat better in the Electoral College than in the popular vote because every state gets three electoral votes regardless of population – and many less-populated states are rural and more Republican.

For some, this raises the question: What is the use of national polls if they don’t tell us who is likely to win the presidency? In fact, national polls try to gauge the opinions of all Americans, regardless of whether they live in a battleground state like Pennsylvania, a reliably red state like Idaho or a reliably blue state like Rhode Island. In short, national polls tell us what the entire citizenry is thinking. Polls that focus only on the competitive states run the risk of giving too little attention to the needs and views of the vast majority of Americans who live in uncompetitive states – about 80%.

Fortunately, this is not how most pollsters view the world . As the noted political scientist Sidney Verba explained, “Surveys produce just what democracy is supposed to produce – equal representation of all citizens.”

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Scott Keeter is a senior survey advisor at Pew Research Center .

Courtney Kennedy is Vice President of Methods and Innovation at Pew Research Center .

How do people in the U.S. take Pew Research Center surveys, anyway?

How public polling has changed in the 21st century, what 2020’s election poll errors tell us about the accuracy of issue polling, a field guide to polling: election 2020 edition, methods 101: how is polling done around the world, most popular.

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https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/20/gcse-results-day-2024-number-grading-system/

GCSE results day 2024: Everything you need to know including the number grading system

Thousands of students across the country will soon be finding out their GCSE results and thinking about the next steps in their education.   

Here we explain everything you need to know about the big day, from when results day is, to the current 9-1 grading scale, to what your options are if your results aren’t what you’re expecting.  

When is GCSE results day 2024?  

GCSE results day will be taking place on Thursday the 22 August.     

The results will be made available to schools on Wednesday and available to pick up from your school by 8am on Thursday morning.  

Schools will issue their own instructions on how and when to collect your results.   

When did we change to a number grading scale?  

The shift to the numerical grading system was introduced in England in 2017 firstly in English language, English literature, and maths.  

By 2020 all subjects were shifted to number grades. This means anyone with GCSE results from 2017-2020 will have a combination of both letters and numbers.  

The numerical grading system was to signal more challenging GCSEs and to better differentiate between students’ abilities - particularly at higher grades between the A *-C grades. There only used to be 4 grades between A* and C, now with the numerical grading scale there are 6.  

What do the number grades mean?  

The grades are ranked from 1, the lowest, to 9, the highest.  

The grades don’t exactly translate, but the two grading scales meet at three points as illustrated below.  

The bottom of grade 7 is aligned with the bottom of grade A, while the bottom of grade 4 is aligned to the bottom of grade C.    

Meanwhile, the bottom of grade 1 is aligned to the bottom of grade G.  

What to do if your results weren’t what you were expecting?  

If your results weren’t what you were expecting, firstly don’t panic. You have options.  

First things first, speak to your school or college – they could be flexible on entry requirements if you’ve just missed your grades.   

They’ll also be able to give you the best tailored advice on whether re-sitting while studying for your next qualifications is a possibility.   

If you’re really unhappy with your results you can enter to resit all GCSE subjects in summer 2025. You can also take autumn exams in GCSE English language and maths.  

Speak to your sixth form or college to decide when it’s the best time for you to resit a GCSE exam.  

Look for other courses with different grade requirements     

Entry requirements vary depending on the college and course. Ask your school for advice, and call your college or another one in your area to see if there’s a space on a course you’re interested in.    

Consider an apprenticeship    

Apprenticeships combine a practical training job with study too. They’re open to you if you’re 16 or over, living in England, and not in full time education.  

As an apprentice you’ll be a paid employee, have the opportunity to work alongside experienced staff, gain job-specific skills, and get time set aside for training and study related to your role.   

You can find out more about how to apply here .  

Talk to a National Careers Service (NCS) adviser    

The National Career Service is a free resource that can help you with your career planning. Give them a call to discuss potential routes into higher education, further education, or the workplace.   

Whatever your results, if you want to find out more about all your education and training options, as well as get practical advice about your exam results, visit the  National Careers Service page  and Skills for Careers to explore your study and work choices.   

You may also be interested in:

• Results day 2024: What's next after picking up your A level, T level and VTQ results?
• When is results day 2024? GCSEs, A levels, T Levels and VTQs

Tags: GCSE grade equivalent , gcse number grades , GCSE results , gcse results day 2024 , gsce grades old and new , new gcse grades

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