Materials from a graduate spatial-economics course at the University of Chicago (2025–2026), where I served as a teaching assistant. The slides cover the canonical quantitative-spatial-economics workflow end to end. The Julia code here accompanies the first deck; for the remaining decks I used the authors' published replication packages instead.
A series of five decks I prepared, walking from the basic model-inversion problem up through the frontier methods for solving high-dimensional heterogeneous-agent dynamics.
| # | Deck | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Model Inversion | The canonical Helpman (1998) / Allen–Arkolakis (2014) / Redding–Rossi-Hansberg (2017) quantitative spatial model, set up as an inversion problem. |
| 02 | Counterfactuals | Caliendo, Parro, Rossi-Hansberg & Sarte (2018) — multi-region, multi-sector trade and migration via Eaton–Kortum (2002) Fréchet productivity. Hat algebra in the changes. |
| 03 | Numerical Methods | Solvers (Newton–Raphson, Broyden, Levenberg–Marquardt, Nelder–Mead), fixed-point theory (Banach, Perov, Blackwell), Anderson acceleration, dampening, Walrasian tâtonnement, shooting and BVP methods. |
| 04 | Dynamic Spatial Models | Caliendo, Dvorkin & Parro (2019) — dynamic discrete choice for migration with forward-looking workers; dynamic hat algebra; the China-shock counterfactual. |
| 05 | Master Equation and FAME | Bilal (2023) and Bilal & Rossi-Hansberg (2023). Fréchet derivatives and adjoints, the master equation, the First-order Approximation to the Master Equation (FAME), and an application to a spatial model. |
| Folder | Companion deck | What it does |
|---|---|---|
rrh2017_inversion/ |
01 | Solves equations (16)–(17) of RRH (2017) for productivity NonlinearSolve.jl. Includes a derivation of why naive iteration on equation (16) diverges and which solvers actually converge. |
- Allen, T. & Arkolakis, C. (2014). "Trade and the Topography of the Spatial Economy." Quarterly Journal of Economics 129(3): 1085–1140.
- Bilal, A. (2023). "Solving Heterogeneous-Agent Models with the Master Equation." Working paper.
- Bilal, A. & Rossi-Hansberg, E. (2023). "Anticipating Climate Change Across the United States." Working paper.
- Caliendo, L. & Parro, F. (2015). "Estimates of the Trade and Welfare Effects of NAFTA." Review of Economic Studies 82(1): 1–44.
- Caliendo, L., Dvorkin, M. & Parro, F. (2019). "Trade and Labor Market Dynamics: General Equilibrium Analysis of the China Trade Shock." Econometrica 87(3): 741–835.
- Caliendo, L., Parro, F., Rossi-Hansberg, E. & Sarte, P.-D. (2018). "The Impact of Regional and Sectoral Productivity Changes on the U.S. Economy." Review of Economic Studies 85(4): 2042–2096.
- Dornbusch, R., Fischer, S. & Samuelson, P. (1977). "Comparative Advantage, Trade, and Payments in a Ricardian Model with a Continuum of Goods." American Economic Review 67(5): 823–839.
- Eaton, J. & Kortum, S. (2002). "Technology, Geography, and Trade." Econometrica 70(5): 1741–1779.
- Helpman, E. (1998). "The Size of Regions." In Topics in Public Economics, Cambridge University Press.
- Redding, S. J. & Rossi-Hansberg, E. (2017). "Quantitative Spatial Economics." Annual Review of Economics 9: 21–58.