Gabriel Ahlfeldt
What effect do major transport projects and architectural developments have on local house prices, local political preferences and urban structures? How do various agglomeration forces shape the spatial concentration of economic activity? These questions are at the heart of Gabriel Ahlfeldt’s research.
In a current project with Stephan Redding (Princeton), Daniel Sturm (LSE) and Nikolaus Wolf (HU Berlin), Gabriel Ahlfeldt is working on the estimation of a new general equilibrium urban model of simultaneous household and firm location. Using the exogenous variation that stems from the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the authors seek to separate economic agglomeration and dispersion forces (e.g., firm spillovers, residential externalities, commuting costs, rents) from unobserved location fundamental factors that determine the attractiveness of urban areas to residents and firms.
While at CESifo, Gabriel Ahlfeldt will start a new research project at the intersection of urban and environmental economics with Ifo researcher Marc Gronwald. They will analyse how the implementation of energy efficiency standards impact the profitability and market valuation of commercial and residential buildings.
Gabriel Ahlfeldt has been a lecturer in Urban Economics and Land Development at the Department of Geography and Environment of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) since 2009. Prior to joining LSE, he earned his PhD in economics from the University of Hamburg and worked as a research assistant at the Free University of Berlin. Mr Ahlfeldt is an affiliate of the Spatial Economics Research Centre (SERC) and an associate of the Centre for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin. His recent analyses of the urban spatial structures in Berlin and Chicago have been supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the German Science Foundation (DFG) and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. His research on conservation has been supported by English Heritage and The Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines.