research
a list of my research output
2026
- WIPHybrid Work Arrangements and City StructureYobin Timilsena2026Work in Progress
This paper examines the impact of the shift to hybrid work on city structure. Using a quantitative, static spatial model that accounts for agglomeration spillover effects on productivity and amenities, I analyse intra-city migration patterns, housing price changes, and welfare outcomes following an exogenous shift in work modality. Simulating a simplified, two-location model of the city, I find that hybrid workers tend to relocate to suburbs, demand bigger floorspace to accommodate home offices, and push up prices in the suburbs. Both on-site and hybrid workers experience modest welfare declines, which suggests that the loss in productivity from remote work outweighs the benefits from reduced commuting costs. Moreover, ignoring agglomeration spillovers leads to predictions of exaggerated migration patterns within the city, in contrast with observed data, and to the misleading conclusion that welfare improves across the board.
- WIPSpatial Transmission of Inequality through EducationYobin Timilsena2026Work in Progress
This project studies the relationship between spatial disparities in income and wealth and spatial disparities in educational outcomes. Using school-level data for Greater Melbourne, the empirical analysis documents significant spatial clustering in test scores and school composition. To understand these patterns, I develop a spatial overlapping generations model in which households make joint location and education decisions that shape long-run outcomes. Education quality endogenously varies across space as a function of school funding, neighbourhood composition, local amenities, and their spatial spillovers. This framework is used to evaluate policy interventions, including resource-based and place-based policies, and to assess how their effects operate through changes in local education outcomes, residential sorting, human capital accumulation, and the spatial distribution of future opportunity.
- WIPSpatial Misallocation of Innovation: Evidence from IndiaYobin Timilsena, and Reshad AhsanEarly stage collaborative work. , 2026Work in Progress
Innovative firms in India cluster far more strongly in large cities than non-innovative firms—the top fifty pincodes account for 42% of patents but only 26% of sales. This project extends a quantitative spatial sorting model to include an explicit firm innovation decision, generating a "double agglomeration force" whereby larger cities attract innovators through both higher production efficiency and stronger local knowledge spillovers. Using matched Indian firm and patent data, we estimate the model for the universe of Indian firms and evaluate the welfare consequences of place-based policies through their effects on aggregate innovation intensity, firm sorting efficiency, and regional inequality.