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Many of our seminars and public events this year will continue as in person or as hybrid (online and in person) events.

Please check our website listings and Twitter feed @STICERD_LSE for updates.

Unless otherwise specified, in-person seminars are open to the public. Please ensure you have informed the event contact as early as possible.

Those unable to join the seminars in-person are welcome to participate via zoom if the event is hybrid.

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About this event

This paper studies how consumption opportunities vary within a city and how these differences shape urban inequality and residential sorting. Using novel barcode-level price data from all formal retailers in Alagoas, Brazil, I document large within-city disparities in prices, varieties, and product quality. Higher-income neighbourhoods offer greater variety and quality at systematically higher prices. To interpret these patterns, I develop a quantitative spatial model in which households value varieties and quality differently by income, and firms choose both locations and product assortments. In this environment, neighbourhood composition affects the market size for a given variety, creating consumption externalities: households benefit from living near others with similar preferences because it expands the set of varieties they can access. The model clarifies how these endogenous differences in product availability and pricing generate an amenity that attracts richer households and amplifies spatial inequality.