CAREER: Empirical Studies on the Role of Cities in Influencing Health and Economic Growth in the Long Run

该项目的目标是提高我们对城市的理解，以及城市特征如何影响长期福利和经济增长。该项目侧重于需要新的研究方法和成果的两个领域，以便为正在进行的政策辩论提供信息。其中一项研究侧重于提高我们对本地买家-供应商关系网络的理解。具体而言，PI研究了本地买家-供应商网络如何改善企业绩效，以及它们在将冲击扩散到当地经济中所起的作用。提高我们对这些问题的理解，可以帮助我们预测对重要本地企业的冲击可能对整体经济产生的影响。第二部分研究鼓励城市工业增长和保护当地环境之间的权衡，这对城市居民的健康、城市增长和人口分类具有影响。为了在这些重要问题上取得进展，该项目将长期（跨越150年）跟踪城市经济发展的数据与新的理论和计量工具相结合。原始数据集描述了31个城市所有行业按行业划分的城市就业演变情况。其他信息包括城市卫生、教育、婚姻和生育模式、公司破产等方面。更具分析性的是，本项目的第一部分研究利用了这些新数据，以理解(1)企业间网络如何影响城市的长期增长，以及(2)这些网络在冲击在当地经济中的传播中所起的作用。这包括使标准经济理论适应于经验设置，推导基于理论的估计方程，并将其应用于数据。这一研究流有助于我们对城市的理解，并有助于改善当地的产业政策决策，包括美国地方和州政府每年用于吸引产业的800亿美元税收激励。该项目的第二部分研究试图评估当地环境退化对当地经济增长的长期影响。标准的城市经济理论预测，地方污染将通过以下方式减缓经济增长：(1)使企业更难吸引和留住工人；(2)通过影响工人的健康降低工人的生产率和生活质量。在这一系列工作中，PI将当地污染纳入标准的城市经济模型。然后，该模型被用于开发一种基于理论的估计方法，以衡量当地污染对当地就业增长的长期影响。该项目还研究了当地污染对健康的长期影响。研究结果有助于提高我们对地方工业污染的经济成本和地方环境监管的经济影响的理解。

The goal of this project is to improve our understanding of cities and how their characteristics can influence welfare and economic growth over the long-term. The project focuses on two areas where new research methods and results are needed in order to inform ongoing policy debates. One strand of research focuses on improving our understanding of local networks of buyer-supplier relationships. Specifically, the PI studies how local buyer-supplier networks can improve firm performance, and the role that they play in spreading shocks across local economies. Improving our understanding of these issues can help us anticipate the impact that shocks to important local firms can have on the larger economy. The second research strand studies the tradeoff between encouraging industrial growth in cities and protecting the local environment, which has implications for the health of city residents, city growth, and population sorting. To make progress on these important issues, this project combines data tracking the economic development of cities over the long-run (across a period of 150 years) with new theoretical and econometric tools. The primary data set describes the evolution of city employment, by industry, for all industries in 31 cities. Additional information covers aspects of city health, education, marriage and fertility patterns, firm bankruptcies, etc. More analytically, the first strand of research in this project draws on these new data in order to understand (1) how inter-firm networks influence the long-term growth of cities and (2) the role that these networks play in the propagation of shocks through local economies. This involves adapting standard economic theories to the empirical setting, deriving theoretically-grounded estimating equations, and applying them to the data. This research stream can contribute to our understanding of cities and can help improve local industrial policy decisions, including the $80 billion in tax incentives that local and state governments in the U.S. use each year to attract industries.The second strand of research in this project tries to estimate the impact of local environmental degradation on local economic growth over the long run. Standard urban economic theories predict that local pollution will slow down economic growth by (1) making it more difficult for firms to attract and retain workers, and (2) by lowering the productivity and quality-of-life of workers by affecting their health. In this strand of work, the PI incorporates local pollution into a standard urban economic model. The model is then used to develop a theoretically-grounded estimation approach for measuring the impact of local pollution on local employment growth over the long-run. The PI also studies the long-term health effects of local pollution. The results can help improve our understanding of the economic costs of local industrial pollution and the economic impact of local environmental regulation.