Urban Economics

Notes & simulations

Interactive simulations for urban economics. Each topic pairs explanation with a simulation you can run in the browser — see how land markets, housing prices, agglomeration, sorting, and neighborhood change actually work, not just read about them.

The course covers the core models that economists use to understand cities: why they exist, how they’re shaped, who lives where, and what happens when policy intervenes. Topics range from the classic monocentric city model to modern debates about zoning, gentrification, and spatial misallocation.

Builds on: Statistical Inference | Causal Inference

Land & Location

• The Monocentric City — The Alonso-Muth-Mills model: rent gradients, city size, and suburbanization
• Spatial Equilibrium — Rosen-Roback: why high-wage cities have high rents

Housing

• Hedonic Pricing — Rosen (1974): decomposing house prices into attribute values
• Zoning & Housing Supply — Supply elasticity, the regulatory tax, and the affordability crisis

Agglomeration & Sorting

• Agglomeration Economies — Why firms cluster: labor pooling, input sharing, and knowledge spillovers
• Tiebout Sorting — Voting with your feet: local public goods and jurisdictional competition

Neighborhoods

• Gentrification & Displacement — Neighborhood change, rising rents, and who stays vs who leaves