Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
What generates the large amount of heterogeneity and persistence in U.S. city growth rates? To answer this question we construct a dynamic general equilibrium model of urban migration that is consistent with the approximately linear relation between gross and net migration rates that we uncover in a panel of 381 metropolitan statistical areas. Consistency with this relation together with the model’s structure of moving costs delivers a parsimonious reduced form in which competitive equilibrium allocations are given by the solution to a city’s social planner problem subject to quadratic population adjustment costs. A calibrated version of the model indicates that empirically measured total factor productivity shocks account for most of the short-run and long-run population dynamics observed in U.S. data.