Stephan Heblich

Stephan Heblich is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto. Before joining Toronto, he held academic positions at the Universities of Bristol and Stirling in the United Kingdom. He is affiliated with CESifo, the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His research spans urban economics, economic history, and environmental economics, with a focus on understanding the spatial organization of economic activity and its long-run consequences. He is also interested in the effects of transportation infrastructure on urban development and in the evaluation of local policies.

Three recurrent themes characterize Stephan’s work. First, it integrates theoretical insights from regional and urban economics with rich microgeographic data and rigorous empirical methods. Second, his research places strong emphasis on policy relevance and often uses historical episodes to shed light on the origins of contemporary spatial inequalities and to evaluate long-run policy effects. Third, many of his projects rely on newly constructed microgeographic datasets, sometimes generated using machine learning and other computational tools, to uncover economic mechanisms that are difficult to observe with conventional data.

Through this approach, his research contributes to a deeper understanding of how place, history, and policy interact to shape economic outcomes. Currently, Stephan is an editor of the Journal of Urban Economics and an associate editor of Regional Science and Urban Economics and the Journal of Economic Geography.