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Research 'Urban Economics'

The research group “Urban Economics” is looking at the historical development of cities from an urban economic perspective. Current research projects focus on the cities of Berlin (funded by the German Science Foundation) and Chicago (funded by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy). The starting point for the empirical analyses is the extraction from historical sources of several variables that capture the city's economic development over time. These unique data sets allows for the investigation of the development of urban structure follow shocks to the transport (e.g. improved public transport), political (e.g. Berlin’s raise as capital of the German Reich) or social (e.g. Chicago’s 20^th century immigration flows) geography of the cities.

News: Gabriel Ahlfeldt presents interim results of the "100 years of land values" project at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Boston, MA.

Directors