I use the monocentric city model to relate urban rent and density gradients to a third gradient describing transportation costs. I estimate rent gradients for 734 cities world-wide using internationally comparable data on Airbnb properties. The average elasticity of rent to distance from the city center is -0.06. Rent gradients are less pronounced in cities that are smaller or located in upper-middle-income countries. Density gradients are steeper than rent gradients in most cities. Combining the two types of gradients, I estimate the elasticity of transportation costs to distance from the city center to be 0.3 on average. Taken together, the two estimates imply a concave transportation cost function. While I precisely match the Duranton and Puga (2022) urban cost estimate of 0.07 for the United States, my global estimate of 0.3 suggests that the US is an outlier, with transportation costs being less sensitive to distance than elsewhere.

Using a hedonic regression approach with data from 1.53 million Airbnb properties, I estimate the price of a representative short-term rental property at the center of 734 cities worldwide. The estimated rental prices provide an internationally standardized proxy for housing costs. Rental prices computed in this way are found to be highest in Amsterdam, London, New York, and San Francisco. I use these standardized rental price estimates to compute the elasticity of housing costs with respect to city size. My preferred specification shows an elasticity of 0.16, statistically significant at the 1% level. However, there is considerable geographic heterogeneity. Housing costs increase more strongly in city size in the euro area and India than elsewhere. In contrast, I find them to decrease in city size in Mexico. I offer suggestive evidence that crime might explain this unusual result.

I study the effect of trade in mining goods on conflict events in the border region of Myanmar. Using a shift-share measure, I disaggregate national exports to the township level. Imports from other low and middle-income countries are used to construct an instrumental variable to rule out reverse causality. I use a two-way fixed effects model for estimation. Export exposure to mining goods is associated with an increase in violent conflict. This increase predominantly affects townships inhabited by ethnic minorities. A placebo test confirms that the production of mining goods drives the effect. Night lights close to the mines are brighter in years with high export exposure, but surrounding areas do not seem to benefit.

We study the evolution of nightlights in Myanmar’s border regions between 2013 and 2019, a period of pronounced trade liberalization. We find towns on busy border crossings with China and Thailand to have grown disproportionately, as did some towns further inland along border crossing road corridors. However, rural areas in border regions between the main towns did not seem to benefit from the increased trading opportunities, nor did locations situated off the main road corridors. Moreover, border regions with India even saw a reduction in average nightlight intensity, and light growth on the foreign side of border crossings was generally more pronounced than on the Myanmar side. Our findings suggest that political tensions and other constraints might be preventing Myanmar border-region populations from benefiting from the opportunities of cross-border trade.