Quantitative methods in spatial economics (6 cr)

Code:
ECON-L6230
Field:
Urban Economics
Targets:
Research Master's students PhD students
Organiser:
Aalto University
Instructor:
Prottoy Akbar and Pablo Warnes
Period:
Period 5
Format:
Lecture
Method:
Contact teaching
Venue:
Otaniemi campus
Enrollment:

In case of conflicting information consider the Sisu/MyCourses pages the primary source of information.

Aalto, Hanken and UH economics students can enroll through their home university’s SISU. Further instructions are available on the How to enroll? page, also for students from other universities.

If you would like to count the credits towards your degree, please check your curriculum or contact your supervisor or student services for guidance.

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This doctoral field course will cover recent papers in quantitative spatial economics with a focus on computational implementation and empirical estimation.

The course covers recent quantitative urban models that rationalize the observed spatial distribution of economic activity within cities. We will focus on two strands of methodological advances: (1) "equilibrium sorting" models that use properties of market equilibria to characterize preferences over locational amenities, and (2) "quantitative spatial equilibrium" models that can be used to undertake counterfactuals for general equilibrium impacts of empirically-realistic policy interventions. This entails: i) working with spatial data to generate the necessary model inputs; ii) setting, estimating, and inverting the primitives of the model; iii) using numerical procedures to solve for the spatial equilibrium and conduct counterfactual analysis.