Nick Tsivanidis

My research studies the role of cities in economic development.

Assistant Professor
Haas School of Business
University of California at Berkeley

Cities Research Co-Director, International Growth Centre
Faculty Research Fellow, NBER (DEV, ITI)
Affiliate, BREAD

ntsivanidis@berkeley.edu
CV

Published Papers

Evaluating the Impact of Urban Transit Infrastructure: Evidence from Bogotá’s TransMilenio
American Economic Review, 2026, 116(2): 418–463
[ Paper | Publication Website | Replication Package ]

Contract Labor and Firm Growth in India (with Marianne Bertrand and Chang-Tai Hsieh)
Econometrica, 2025, 93(4):1411-1448
[ Paper | Publication Website | Replication Package ]

Cities in the Developing World (with Gharad Bryan and Ed Glaeser)
Annual Review of Economics, 2020 12:1, 273-297
[ Paper | Longer NBER Working Paper ]

Working Papers

The Welfare Effects of Gentrification in Developing Country Cities (with Michael Gechter)
New version coming soon
Revise and Resubmit, Econometrica
[ Paper | Online Appendix | Supplementary Material ]

Public and Private Transit: Evidence from Lagos (with Dan Björkegren, Alice Duhaut and Geetika Nagpal)
Revise and Resubmit, American Economic Review
[ Paper ]

Works in Progress

Henry George in Action: Land Value Capture in São Paulo (with Gharad Bryan, Flavia Leite and Caterina Soto-Vieira)

Climate Security and Informal Settlements: Evidence from Sierra Leone (with Gharad Bryan, Abou Bakarr Kamara and Emiliano Rinaldi)

Efficiency of Informal Transit Networks (with Dan Björkegren, Alice Duhaut, Geetika Nagpal and Nicola Rosaia)

Policy Work

IGC Cities Spatial Model (with Hugh Cole, Victoria Delbridge, Maria del Mar Gómez, Daniel Ruiz Palomo and Román David Zárate)
Open-Source Practitioner Toolkit to use Quantitative Urban Models in Prospective Policy Evaluation
[ Website ]