Instructors

Nick Tsivanidis (Berkeley Hass)

Dates

9-13 September 2024

Hours

15:00 to 18:30 CEST

Format

In person

Intended for

Researchers interested in using spatial models to study questions related to economic geography and urban economics.

Prerequisites

Master-level courses in microeconomics and econometrics.

Overview

Recent advances in urban and spatial economics have developed new toolkits that enable researchers to combine rich models where heterogeneous agents make interdependent location decisions with rich, granular data to answer questions related to housing, transportation, migration, and firm location. The spatial distribution of economic activities is shaped both by variation in exogenous geographical characteristics and by endogenous interactions between agents in land, factor, and good markets. This course will teach students how to develop, estimate, and use these models. It will cover both models studying a single city and models studying a set of rural and urban locations across a country or group of countries. Classes will review frontier papers in the literature which should be read in advance, and students will engage with a quantitative project in which they will learn how to code one such model in practice. Participants will also have opportunities to present and discuss ideas for how these tools can be applied in their own research.

Topics

• Quantitative Spatial Equilibrium models within a single city
• Quantitative Spatial Equilibrium models across cities and regions
• Spatial dynamics
• Applications to housing
• Applications to transportation
• Applications to migration

Nick Tsivanidis is Assistant Professor at the University of California Haas School of Business, and Co-Director of the Cities Research Programme at the International Growth Centre. He obtained his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2018. His research connects theory with new sources of granular data to learn about the process of urbanization in developing countries.