1. Administrative data, calling patterns and spatial economics: Impact evaluation drawing on multiple data sources
Nathaniel Young (EBRD)

2. Rapid Urbanization: Refugees in Amman (with Michael Gechter and Nick Tsivanidis)
How do cities respond to rapid influx?
Where do migrants move? Where do they work? Do these patterns change? Do their social networks evolve? What is the impact on long-term residents?
Combine multiple data sources:
CDR (mobile phone data)
Administrative Data and Satellite Imagery
Document new facts about behavior patterns
Estimate a quantitative economic model of Amman taking the above as inputs
Goal: Deliver insights valuable in planning infrastructure upgrades to alleviate congestion

3. Model and Data
Model: Discrete block-level analysis of where individuals work and live (e.g. Ahlfeldt et al. (2016))
Extend model to include “long term residents” and “migrants”
Economic linkages across every location in the city allows estimating the global effect of “local” policies
Data:
Population Census (2004, 2015): location densities;
Economic Census and Business Registry: employment densities;
CDR: commuting flows (Kreindler & Miyauchi, 2015);
Land Registry: building footprints;
Satellite Imagery: calculate building height (using shadows).

4. Policy Analysis and Suggestions
Using the estimated model we will simulate:
Impact of improved transit along highly congested routes
Impact of additional housing across city localities given the new population distribution
Impact of alternative zoning strategies
Funding for this project is provided by:

5. Trade Impact of Turkish Roads Upgrade (with Kerem Cosar and Banu Demir Pakel)
Before
After

6. Purpose of the project
Focuses on the relationship between infrastructure and growth.
Exploits the large-scale public investment in roads undertaken in Turkey during the 2000s to emphasize the role of market access for domestic trade between Turkish provinces, as well as for their output and employment.
Follows up on Cosar and Demir (2016) who report that Turkish provinces that experienced a greater improvement in their connectivity to the country’s international gateways during this period posted a higher increase in their international trade flows:
$1 investment generated a 10-year discounted stream of additional trade between $0.7-$2.

7. Firm-to-firm domestic trade data
Newly available datasets on domestic production networks:
Administrative data based on VAT records
Universe of buyer-supplier relationships in the domestic economy (subject to reporting thresholds)
Possible to merge with firm-level balance sheet and international trade data
Currently available for a few countries such as Belgium, Chile, Ecuador, and Turkey.
Allows us to study questions of firm interdependencies and their implications for the aggregate economy: e.g. propagation of shocks, firm granularity and aggregate fluctuations.

8. Turkey’s firm-to-firm trade data
Data cover about
600,000 firms;
6 million buyer-seller connections;
20 million transactions each year.
Median number of suppliers per buyer is 20, and number of buyers per supplier is 45.
We aggregate purchases and sales at the province level.

9. Road Network with Night Lights

10. Preliminary Results of the Impact from Road Upgrades on…
Trade between Turkish Provinces
New Trade Links