WORKING PAPERS​

Multipliers from a major public sector relocation: The BBC moves to Salford (with M. Nathan, H. Overman, C. Riom and M. Sanchez-Vidal) [CEP Discussion Paper]

This paper considers the impact of a major public sector relocation: the British Broadcasting Corporation's partial move from London to Salford, Greater Manchester starting in 2011. We identify effects of the move, using synthetic control methods on workplace data aggregated to Local Authority level. Each BBC job increases employment in Salford's creative industries by 0.33 jobs on average, rising to 0.76 jobs by 2017. Offsetting changes in non-creative industries mean the move has no effect on total employment. We also consider effects on firm size and variation across different creative and non-creative industries. We find a positive effect on wages and no evidence of displacement.

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Highway traffic in Britain: The effect of road capacity changes (with M.A Garcia-López and R. Sanchis-Guarner H.)

[CEP Discussion Paper]

This paper examines the effects of road capacity expansion on traffic volumes, population, and employment in Great Britain between 2001 and 2020, using annual data for 218 Travel-to-Work Areas and an instrumental-variable strategy based on historical railroads. We find a more-than-proportional elasticity of vehicle kilometres traveled (VKT) with respect to lane kilometers: a 10% increase in road capacity raises VKT by nearly 19%. However, this elasticity varies systematically across space, declining with urbanization and converging toward unity in highly urban areas. Disaggregating by vehicle type reveals that induced demand is primarily driven by private cars in urban areas, while commercial vehicles play a large role in rural areas. We also document positive but less-than-proportional effects of road expansion on population and employment. An accounting exercise shows that roughly one quarter of traffic growth operates indirectly through demographic and economic adjustments. Overall, our results provide a nuanced account of how road expansions increase traffic while also generating broader economic effects consistent with welfare gains.

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The next bus out. Urban public transportation and multidimensional poverty  (with A. Garcia-Suaza)

We study the impact of urban public transportation on multidimensional poverty. Our empirical strategy exploits changes in connectivity in Cartagena (Colombia) induced by a new bus rapid transit (BRT) system. We find that the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is 6.4 percent lower in areas surrounding the BRT. This spatial difference is driven by a causal reduction in unemployment. We rule out the possibility that the effect is due to sorting, as there is no significant change in educational levels near the BRT stations, suggesting that high-skilled individuals did not relocate in response to improved connectivity to markets. ​

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PUBLICATIONS

Housing prices, buses, and trams in Medellín (Colombia) (With M.A García López)

Research in Transportation Economics, vol. 106, September 2024

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SELECTED WORK IN PROGRESS

​Bypassing pollution (with M.A Garcia-López and R. Sanchis-Guarner H.) 

Impact of local public transport schemes on economic growth (with G. Nunez-Chaim and H. Overman) 

Concentrate to adapt: crops, droughts and land productivity