Objective: To analyze gender gaps in entrepreneurship in Latin America and the Caribbean and quantify their aggregate effects on productivity and income per capita. Methodology: Gender differences in entrepreneurship were documented using evidence on the participation and size of female-run firms, and the theoretical framework developed by Cuberes and Teignier (2022) was employed to quantify their aggregate effects. The model assumes that the barriers faced by some women to become firm managers increase with managerial talent, leading female-run firms to be smaller than male-run firms in equilibrium. Findings: The results show that only about one fourth of firms are managed by women and that female-run firms are approximately three times smaller than those managed by men. For Latin America, gender gaps in entrepreneurship generate a 9% loss in output per capita, entirely explained by resource misallocation and the resulting decline in aggregate productivity. This loss is 1.3 times larger than that obtained under a framework in which barriers to entrepreneurship are assumed to be independent of talent. Implications: The findings indicate that reducing gender-based barriers to entrepreneurship can improve resource allocation, increase aggregate productivity, and raise income per capita. Originality: The study quantifies the aggregate costs of gender gaps in entrepreneurship using a theoretical framework in which barriers to entrepreneurship depend on managerial talent.

This paper uses a novel dataset and the general equilibrium model in Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg (2013) to analyze the Spanish city size distribution, which is driven by three city-specific characteristics: productivity, amenities, and frictions. Counterfactual simulations show that removing cross-city variation in these characteristics leads to welfare gains and population shifts in Spain larger than those in the U.S. but smaller than in China. Moreover, policies targeting these city characteristics consistently outperform those based on population size. For example, capping the populations of the two largest cities, Madrid and Barcelona, reduces overall welfare.

This paper uses the framework of Cuberes and Teignier (2018) to study the quantitative effects of gender gaps in entrepreneurship and workforce participation in Mexico. The focus on one specific country allows us to have detailed information on men and women’s participation in household production and their productivity in that sector. In line with our previous research, the occupational choice model predicts substantial losses in the country’s income per capita. Gender gaps in the Mexican labor market, especially in labor force participation, represent a 22% fall in total output. Market output drops by 26.5%, while household output experiences a five-fold increase. The presence of the large gap in labor force participations implies that it is important to introduce the household sector into the model to take the production that takes place outside the market sector into account.

In this paper, we use survey data from the South Caucasus countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) to document the presence of gender gaps in the labor market and examine its consequences. To do the analysis, we use a numerical general-equilibrium occupational choice model with heterogeneous agents in entrepreneurial ability. We then introduce the observed gender gaps in labor-force participants, employers, and self-employed. We find that entrepreneurship gender gaps cause an average GDP loss of 6.2%, while gender gaps in labor-force participation cause an average GDP loss of 9%. Armenia (2007) displays the largest total loss and Georgia (2007, 2014) the smallest ones. We also decompose the gender gaps and their associated costs by households with different education levels and with and without dependents at home. Our results indicate that most of the income losses are driven by households with high education and those with dependents, especially those with both children and elderly at home.

We use microdata to calculate the gains of eliminating gender and ethnic labor market gaps in Malaysia for the period 2010–2017. We document significant gaps in terms of participation in the labor market and entrepreneurship, distinguishing between employers and self-employed. Female-male ratios are 64% for labor market participation, 82% for self-employment, and 32% for being employers. Across different age and ethnic groups, gender gaps in labor force participation are particularly pronounced for older workers and in entrepreneurship for Chinese workers. Our results indicate substantial income gains if gender and ethnic gaps were eliminated. Eliminating the entrepreneurship gender gaps increases income per capita by 6.54% in the long run. When we also include the employment gender gap, the long-run gains are 26.18%. The elimination of ethnic gaps could in the long run result in a smaller but still sizeable increase in income per capita of 11.5%.

In this paper we use data on Spanish cities between 2006 and 2015 to study the Spanish urban system applying the model in Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg (2013). We decompose the determinants of the Spanish city size distribution into three main components: efficiency, amenities, and frictions. In the model, higher efficiency and better amenities lead to larger cities but also to greater frictions through congestion and othernegative effects of agglomeration. We find that eliminating variation in any of these three components leads to large population reallocations, but modest welfare effects. However, some individual cities benefit and others experience large changes as a result of these policy experiments. The largest effects are seen in terms of equating the excessive frictions - a measure of poor governance- across all cities. Madrid and Barcelona,by far the two largest Spanish cities, are not too populated according to our calculations since relocating large amounts of people away from these cities does not generate large welfare gains. Changing their governance to the average governance of Spanish cities would result in large losses in population in these two cities, suggesting that they are indeed very well managed. Similarly, both Madrid and Barcelona would loose a lotof population if they were assigned the average efficiency of the Spanish city, suggesting that both cities can be considered very efficient according to the measure estimated in this paper.

This paper documents the existence of significant gender gaps in STEM occupations in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico and estimates the aggregate costs associated with these gaps in Mexico. For Mexico we calibrate and simulate a version of the general equilibrium occupational choice model of Hsieh et al. (2019) to estimate the output losses associated with these differences since 1992. We find that if barriers in STEM occupations were eliminated aggregate output would have been between 1% and 10% larger, depending on the year. If female-specific social norms were also eliminated, the rise in aggregate output would be between 1.4% and 14%. For comparison purposes, we also compute the gains of eliminating all the distortions in high-skilled occupations as well as in all occupations. We find that aggregate output would rise between 16.5% and 3.6% in the first case and between 36.7% and 12% in the latter.

This paper documents differences in firm size depending on whether their manager is a man or a woman and studies the aggregate implications of these gender gaps in Chile. We document that in 2007 less than a quarter of firms are managed by women and that this gap takes its largest value for managers with tertiary education or more. In terms of their number of workers, female-run firms are on average about three times smaller than those run by men. Moreover, the ratio of men to women managers is always above one, but it is much higher for large and medium firms than for small or micro ones. These differences remain significant after controlling for several manager and firm characteristics. We then use an extended version of the theoretical framework developed in Cuberes and Teignier (2016) to incorporate these facts and obtain quantitative predictions about their effects on aggregate productivity and income in Chile. We find that the observed gender gaps in entrepreneurship in Chile generate a fall in aggregate productivity and aggregate income of 7.5%.

1 to 50 km -0.63∗ -0.77∗∗∗ -1.10∗∗∗ -0.19 0.15 0.99∗∗∗ 1.29∗∗∗ 0.59∗∗∗ 0.41∗∗ (0.35) (0.28) (0.21) (0.15) (0.14) (0.17) (0.25) (0.18) (0.20) 50 to 100 km 0.67∗∗∗ -0.41∗∗ -0.86∗∗∗ -0.42∗∗∗ -0.20∗ 0.04 0.31 0.35∗∗ 0.11 (0.24) (0.20) (0.18) (0.12) (0.10) (0.12) (0.20) (0.15) (0.09) 100 to 150 km -0.30∗∗∗ -0.11 -0.63∗∗∗ -0.27∗∗ -0.24∗∗∗ -0.22∗∗ 0.17 0.14 0.03 (0.12) (0.17) (0.15) (0.13) (0.09) (0.10) (0.18) (0.13) (0.07)

espanolEn este trabajo revisamos varias politicas de redistribucion espacial y de regeneracion urbana que se han llevado a cabo en las ultimas decadas, con especial atencion al caso espanol. Nuestra conclusion es que algunas politicas han funcionado relativamente bien, aunque los resultados varian mucho dependiendo del contexto. Si bien los gobiernos pueden contribuir a la revitalizacion de las regiones y ciudades con proyectos de inversion, la experiencia comparada muestra que a menudo la politica mas efectiva es intentar atraer capital humano, garantizar los servicios publicos basicos y favorecer el emprendimiento de la gente que vive en ellas. EnglishIn this paper, we review various policies of spatial redistribution and urban regeneration that have been carried out in recent decades, with special attention to the Spanish case. Our conclusion is that some policies have worked relatively well, but the outcomes vary a lot depending on the context. Although governments can contribute to the revitalization of regions and cities through investment projects, the comparative experience shows that often the most effective policy is to try to attract human capital, maintain basic public services, and promote entrepreneurship.

Does a location's growth benefit or suffer from being geographically close to large economic centers? Spatial proximity may lead to competition and hurt growth, but it may also improve market access and enhance growth. Using data on U.S. counties and metro areas for the period 1840-2017, we document this tradeoff between urban shadows and urban access. Proximity to large urban centers was negatively associated with growth between 1840 and 1920, and positively associated with growth after 1920. Using a two-city spatial model, we show that the secular evolution of inter-city and intra-city commuting costs can account for this. Alternatively, the long-run decline in inter-city shipping costs relative to intra-city commuting costs is also consistent with these observed patterns.

espanolEste trabajo lleva a cabo una sintesis de la literatura que estudia la relacion entre la concentracion de la poblacion y el crecimiento economico. Tras discutir brevemente algunos modelos que relacionan urbanizacion y crecimiento economico, hago un resumen de otros que se centran en el efecto de la concentracion urbana en el crecimiento. La evidencia empirica muestra que existe una fuerte relacion causal entre concentracion urbana y crecimiento economico. Esta relacion depende del nivel de desarrollo del pais como sugiere la hipotesis de Williamson, mientras que el efecto de la tasa de urbanizacion de un pais en su crecimiento economico es a menudo espuria. La esca - sa evidencia empirica de la que disponemos para paises en vias de desarrollo indica que la concentracion urbana solo contribuye al crecimiento economico cuando va acompanada de adecuadas infraestructuras. Finalmente, discuto algunas posibles implicaciones en terminos de politicas economicas que pueden derivarse de la literatura sobre este tema. EnglishThis paper summarizes the literature on the relationship between the concentration of discussing some models that link urbanization and economic growth I summarize others that focus on the effect of urban concentration on economic growth. The empirical evidence shows that there exists a strong casual effect of urban concentration on economic growth. This relationship depends on the level of development of the country as predicted by the Williamson hypothesis and the effect of country’s urbanization rate and its rate of economic growth is often spurious. The scarce empirical evidence available at the moment for developing countries shows that urban concentration only contributes to economic growth when it goes hand-in-hand with adequate investment in infrastructure. Finally, I discuss some possible implications in terms of economic policies that could be derived from this literature.

We present a general equilibrium dynamic model that characterizes the gap between optimal and equilibrium fertility and investment in human capital. In the model, the aggregate production function exhibits increasing returns to population arising from specialization but households face the standard quantity-quality trade-off when deciding how many children they have and how much education these children receive. In the benchmark model, we solve for the equilibrium and optimal levels of fertility and investment per child and show that competitive fertility is too low and investment per child too high. We next introduce mortality of young adults in the model and assume that households have a precautionary demand for children. Human capital investment raises the likelihood that a child survives to the next generation. In this setup, the model endogenously generates a demographic transition but, since households do not internalize the positive effects of a larger population on productivity and the negative effects of human capital on mortality, both the industrial revolution and the demographic transition take place much later than it would have been optimal. Our model can be interpreted as a bridge between the literature on endogenous demographic transitions and papers that study welfare issues associated with fertility and human capital decisions.

Este articulo ofrece un breve resumen de la historia de las ciudades. En el explico por que existen las ciudades y como ha evolucionado la urbanizacion mundial en las ultimas decadas, asi como la relacion entre la tasa de urbanizacion de un pais y su crecimiento economico. Expongo asimismo cuales son los factores que, a lo largo de la historia, han hecho que las ciudades crezcan y dejen de hacerlo. Finalmente, presento la idea fundamental del tamano optimo de las ciudades, en la cual se basan muchos trabajos de economia urbana.

This article utilizes recently published US Census data covering the pre–and post–Great Recession period (1990–2015) to identify key determinants of growth among small urban places in the New England Region. We find little evidence of random growth and robust evidence of convergence in growth, indicating that smaller urban areas tend to experience faster rates of growth than larger ones, over both the short and long term. Factors such as distance to large city areas and amenities are found to be particularly relevant to population growth rates. Having a diverse industrial base, high levels of human capital and proximity to large urban areas are factors that positively affect income growth. These results highlight the importance of policies geared to improve cities’ amenities, increase their industrial diversity, and attracting and retaining human capital in urban areas.

This paper is the first to test an amenity-based sorting model for cities in England. We explore household location under both monocentric and polycentric assumptions about city structure. On average, we find no systematic relationship between income and household distance to the city centre. However, there are differences between cities, with a positive income-distance relationship in Birmingham and Leeds, and a negative relationship in Newcastle. Household heterogeneity is also important; for example, on average households with heads who are migrants live 25% closer to the centre than non-migrants. We also find that only the employed (and those above the poverty line) are influenced by the availability of public transport, which is in direct opposition to the US evidence.

In this article we use survey data from the Balkan countries and Turkey to document the presence of gender gaps in the labor market and examine its economic consequences in terms of aggregate income per capita. We first show that the age of women in the labor force, as well as in the categories of employers and self-employed, are clearly below the corresponding figures for men. These gender inequalities display a slightly negative time trend and are present in all age groups, with the middle-age group displaying the lowest inequality in terms of labor force participation but the largest inequality in terms of employers share. Using a theoretical framework we calculate that, on average, the loss associated with these gaps is about 20% of income per capita. Taking into account that the weight of each age group in the total population is different, we find that the aggregate costs associated with each age group are quite similar on average.

This paper examines the quantitative effects of gender gaps in entrepreneurship and workforce participation in an occupational choice model with a household sector. Gender gaps in entrepreneurship affect negatively both income and aggregate productivity, since they reduce the entrepreneurs’ average talent and female labor force participation. We estimate the gender gaps for 37 European countries and we find that gender gaps cause an average market output loss of 11.5% when they are considered constant across talent levels. The loss in total output, which also includes household production, varies between 6.4% and 8.7%, depending on the household productivity parameter.

This paper uses aggregate data from the International Labor Organization and microeconomic data from the European Values Study to quantify gender gaps in entrepreneurship, distinguishing between gender gaps in employership and in self‐employment, and study their main empirical determinants. Our sample consists of 40 European countries and varies broadly in terms of institutional background since it includes several ex‐Communist countries. In the aggregate data we observe a gender gap in employers of 59% and a gender gap in self‐employment of 36%. These gaps have remained roughly constant in the 2000–2017 period, although there are wide differences in both their levels and evolution over time and across countries. Using microeconomic data, we find that the incidence of entrepreneurship, employership, and self‐employment among men is much larger than among women, consistent with the gaps estimated using aggregate data. Our regressions show that these gaps are still sizable even after controlling for a large set of control variables that include marital status, age, education, number of children, wealth, the participation of parents and spouse in entrepreneurship, values toward women, social capital, and prior unemployment. We identify important differences between the determinants of these gaps in ex‐Communist countries and in high‐income ones.