(Forthcoming Article) - We develop a method for delineating prime locations—ultra-dense clusters of economic activity—within cities and apply it to comprehensive establishment data covering all US metropolitan areas. We further use big data to extend the analysis to a global context where administrative data are sparse. Many cities in the US and around the world are dominated by a small number of prime locations that can concentrate up to one-half of tradable services jobs on tiny shares of land and are dominant centers of economic gravity. In cities with fewer prime locations, a larger tradable services share concentrates in them.

(Forthcoming Article) - We model populism as the dissemination of a false “alternative reality”, according to which the intellectual elite conspires against the populist for purely ideological reasons...

We study trade networks following the decline of the Hanseatic League, using a novel trade data set that covers cities and captains in Northern Europe…