Geographic Location →

Tech Hubs: How Software Brought Talent and Prosperity to New Cities

Software invention spurred the rapid ascent of six American tech hubs, helping them draw talent from even larger cities. Will the rise of remote work shake the status quo? Research by William Kerr. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

IT Job Wages Are No Longer 'Exceptional'

Wage growth in IT jobs has moderated following the dot-com boom, according to new research by Ruiqing Sam Cao and Shane Greenstein. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Where the Cloud Rests: The Economic Geography of Data Centers

This study quantifies how data center managers make a trade-off between the setup and operational costs of running a facility and capturing local demand.

Digital Labor Market Inequality and the Decline of IT Exceptionalism

The experience in five cities accounts for almost all the wage inequality in IT wages in the US between 2000 and 2018. Overall that brought IT wages closer to STEM wages.

Does Apple Anchor a Shopping Mall? The Effect of the Technology Stores on the Formation of Market Structure

Anchor stores are the key tenants in a mall, occupying most of the gross leasable area and generating much of the foot traffic. This research provides a framework to understand why new and traditional anchor stores join a shopping mall and how their decisions affect mall configuration.

China-based Fuyao Glass Considers Manufacturing in the US

Not many Chinese companies open manufacturing facilities in the US, but automotive glass maker Fuyao is considering just that. In a recent case study, Willy Shih examines factors that go into deciding where companies should locate production centers. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Can Miguel McKelvey Build the ‘Culture Operating System’ at WeWork?

How deeply does the culture of a startup matter? Can it be shaped? Professor Jeffrey Rayport discusses WeWork cofounder Miguel McKelvey’s innovative role in building a company culture to support rapid growth. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Nowcasting Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change

This study finds that data from digital platforms (in this case, Yelp) can help forecast which neighborhoods are gentrifying and provide new ways to measure business landscape changes that accompany demographic changes.

Where Should We Build a Mall? The Formation of Market Structure and Its Effect on Sales

In spite of the recent surge in e-commerce, brick-and-mortar retail, specifically in the form of large-scale shopping malls, is still the dominant venue for consumer purchases in the developed world. The construction of mass-scale shopping malls has also experienced tremendous growth in newly industrialized countries such as China. This research provides a rigorous, yet practical, framework to understand and evaluate why retail stores join a shopping mall and how their decisions affect mall revenue. The model can be extended and applied to a number of settings where a decision maker must choose among alternative sites to construct a market, for example, for transportation hubs such as airports or train stations.

Location Fundamentals, Agglomeration Economies, and the Geography of Multinational Firms

Understanding the location interdependence of multinational firms and how they agglomerate with one another is critical to designing and improving economic policies. These authors’ analysis, using a worldwide plant-level dataset and a novel index of agglomeration, yields a number of insights into the economic geography of multinational production. In addition to market access and comparative advantage motives, multinationals' location choices are significantly affected by agglomeration economies including not only vertical production linkages but also technology diffusion and capital-market externalities.