About

Costas Arkolakis is a Professor of Economics at Yale University and an NBER Research Associate. He received his undergraduate degree from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and completed his Master’s and Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Minnesota. Since joining Yale’s Department of Economics in 2007, he has advanced through the ranks from Assistant Professor to Full Professor in 2018. His research and teaching focus on general equilibrium trade theory, spatial economics, macroeconomics, and industrial organization. He has been recognized with four National Science Foundation grants, including an NSF CAREER award, and the Bodossaki Foundation Prize in Social Sciences for distinguished young Greek scientists. His work has been published in leading journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Review of Economic Studies. Additionally, he serves as a co-editor of Economic Theory and the Journal of International Economics.

Research topics

• International economics
• Industrial organization
• Business
• International trade
• Finance
• Economics
• Market economy
• Microeconomics

Selected publications

• Quantitative Regional Economics

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  This handbook chapter presents the major advances made in the field of economic geography over the past decade. It starts by documenting a number of motivating empirical facts. It then shows how a quantitative regional model that combines the insights from two seminal models from an earlier generation can explain these facts. It then presents a unified quantitative framework that incorporates this and many other economic geography models. This unified framework is sufficiently tractable to characterize its equilibrium properties while flexible enough to be combined with detailed spatial economic data to estimate the model parameters, conduct counterfactuals, and perform welfare analysis. The chapter concludes by discussing many extensions of the framework, some of which have already been explored and others which have not.

  PublisherDOI

• Production Network Formation, Trade, and Welfare

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
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• The Impact of Workplace Heat and Cold on Work Time Loss

  Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine · 2025-02-07 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access

  OBJECTIVE: We investigated the impact of workplace heat and cold on work time loss. METHODS: Field experiments in different industrial sectors were conducted in multiple countries across all seasons between 2016 and 2024. Hundreds of workers were video recorded, and their full shifts (n = 603) were analyzed on a second-by-second basis (n = 16,065,501 seconds). Environmental data were recorded using portable weather stations. The Workplace Environmental Labor Loss (WELL) functions were developed to describe work time loss due to workplace temperature. RESULTS: The WELL functions revealed a U-shaped relationship whereby the least work time loss is observed at 18°C (64°F) and increases for every degree above or below this optimal temperature. CONCLUSIONS: The WELL functions quantify the impact of workplace temperature on work time loss, extending to temperatures previously believed to be unaffected.

  PublisherDOI

• Optimizing Electric Vehicle Infrastructure

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2025-05-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  What are the welfare gains from upgrading electric vehicle infrastructure? This paper develops a model of electric vehicle charging location decisions incorporating the transportation network structure, allocation of travel, and the effect on electric vehicle demand. We estimate the model with rich data on vehicle registrations, road segments, cell phone tracks, and charging locations and characteristics. We examine a counterfactual that adds level 3 (direct current fast) chargers optimally in the Connecticut transportation network. We find that adding chargers yields significant time savings and consumer welfare gains, while electric vehicle market shares are only modestly affected.

  PublisherDOI

• A Geospatial Approach to Measuring Economic Activity

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Labor Productivity Beyond Output

  Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine · 2025-09-16

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Quantitative Regional Economics

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A Geospatial Approach to Measuring Economic Activity

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-03-01 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  We introduce a new methodology to detect and measure economic activity using geospatial data and apply it to steel production, a major industrial pollution source worldwide.Combining plant output data with geospatial data, such as ambient air pollutants, nighttime lights, and temperature, we train machine learning models to predict plant locations and output.We identify about 40% (70%) of plants missing from the training sample within a 1 km (5 km) radius and achieve R above 0.8 for output prediction at a 1 km grid and at the plant level, as well as for both regional and time series validations.Our approach can be adapted to other industries and regions, and used by policymakers and researchers to track and measure industrial activity in near real time.

  PublisherDOI

• A Geospatial Approach to Measuring Economic Activity

  Research Square · 2025-11-25

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• On the Equilibrium Properties of Spatial Models

  American Economic Review Insights · 2024-11-26 · 13 citations

  article

  We consider a broad class of spatial models where there are many types of interactions across a large number of locations. We provide a new theorem that offers an iterative algorithm for calculating an equilibrium and sufficient and “globally necessary” conditions under which the equilibrium is unique. We show how this theorem enables the characterization of equilibrium properties for one important spatial system: an urban model with spillovers across a large number of different types of agents. An online appendix provides 12 additional examples of both spatial and nonspatial economic frameworks for which our theorem provides new equilibrium characterizations. (JEL C21, R15, R23)

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Frequent coauthors

• Rodrigo Adão

  31 shared

• Treb Allen

  Dartmouth College

  29 shared

• Federico Esposito

  Tufts University

  27 shared

• Marc-Andreas Muendler

  University of California, San Diego

  27 shared

• Sharat Ganapati

  Georgetown University

  23 shared

• Andrés Rodrı́guez-Clare

  15 shared

• George Alessandria

  8 shared

• Kim J. Ruhl

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  7 shared

Labs

• Yale Economic Growth CenterPI

Awards & honors

• Bodossaki Foundation Prize in Social Sciences for distinguis…