Title：The Variety of Nontradable Amenities and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Restaurants

Speaker: Weizeng Sun

Abstract：Much of what we know about firm productivity and the value of amenities is based on cross-city analyses. Using geocoded data from firm-level surveys and crowd-sourced business reviews, this article estimates the effect of nontradable amenity variety on firms’ total factor productivity (TFP) within a consumer metropolis. Exploiting the exogenous variation in new construction residential buildings, we find that one standard deviation increase in restaurant variety in the vicinity of firms leads to 4.8% increase in the firm TFP and the effects are greater for non-SOEs, labor- and skill-intensive firms, and the firms with higher commuting costs. Further, we show that these TFP effects are mediated by the quality of human capital, R&D intensity, employee satisfaction, and workers’ well-being. These findings provide novel evidence that nontradable amenity variety can enhance urban productivity even at fine spatial scales.

孙伟增，中央财经大学经济学院副教授、硕士生导师，入选国家级青年人才计划，中国城市经济学会房地产专业委员会专家委员，中国房地产中青年学者30人论坛成员，上海交通大学住房和城乡建设研究中心特约研究员。研究领域包括城市经济学、区域经济学、房地产经济学等。在PNAS、Journal of Urban Economics、Regional Science and Urban Economics、《中国社会科学》、《经济研究》、《管理世界》等国内外知名期刊发表论文数十篇。主持国家自然科学基金青年和面上项目、北京社会科学基金重点项目、“城市酷想家”团队青年学者资助计划、中央财经大学青年科研创新团队项目等，获得第五届洪银兴经济学奖（青年）、世界华人不动产学会年会最佳论文奖、亚洲房地产学会年会最佳论文奖等学术荣誉和奖励。

Date：Oct 27, 2022 

Time: 12:15-13:30 pm Online

VooVMeeting：404-304-810