Urban Accounting and Welfare
用简单城市体系理论分解城市规模分布的决定因素为效率、便利设施和摩擦，估计美国和中国城市特征后发现，消除任一因素会导致人口大规模重新分配，但福利效应在美国较小，在中国则大得多。
We use a simple theory of a system of cities to decompose the determinants of the city size distribution into three main components: efficiency, amenities, and frictions. Higher efficiency and better amenities lead to larger cities but also to greater frictions through congestion and other negative effects of agglomeration. Using data on MSAs in the United States, we estimate these city characteristics. Eliminating variation in any of them leads to large population reallocations, but modest welfare effects. We apply the same methodology to Chinese cities and find welfare effects that are many times larger than those in the US.