Costas Arkolakis Publications

What are the welfare gains from upgrading electric vehicle infrastructure? This paper develops a model of electric vehicle charging location decisions incorporating the transportation network structure, allocation of travel, and the effect on electric vehicle demand. We estimate the model with rich data on vehicle registrations, road segments, cell phone tracks, and charging locations and characteristics. We examine a counterfactual that adds level 3 (direct current fast) chargers optimally in the Connecticut transportation network. We find that adding chargers yields significant time savings and consumer welfare gains, while electric vehicle market shares are only modestly affected.

We consider a broad class of spatial models where there are many types of interactions across a large number of locations. We provide a new theorem that offers an iterative algorithm for calculating an equilibrium and sufficient and "globally necessary" conditions under which the equilibrium is unique. We show how this theorem enables the characterization of equilibrium properties for one important spatial system: an urban model with spillovers across a large number of different types of agents. An online appendix provides 12 additional examples of both spatial and nonspatial economic frameworks for which our theorem provides new equilibrium characterizations.

What do recent advances in economic geography teach us about the spatial distribution of economic activity? We show that the equilibrium distribution of economic activity can be determined simply by the intersection of labor supply and demand curves. We discuss how to estimate these curves and highlight the importance of global geography—the connections between locations through the trading network—in determining how various policy relevant changes to geography shape the spatial economy.