Many developing economies are characterized by the dominance of a super metropolis. Taking historical Rome as the archetype of a city that centralizes political power to extract resources from the rest of the country, we develop two models of rent-seeking and expropriation which illustrate...

The process of economic development is characterized by substantial reallocations of resources across sectors. In this paper, we construct a multi-sector model in which there are barriers to the movement of labor from low-productivity traditional agriculture to modern sectors. With the barrier...

This paper compares different fiscal integration schemes on the basis of their ability to finance public investments and resilience to debt distress and contagion. Complete integration schemes, where a central authority chooses the level of public investments with productivity-enhancing...

Many developing countries display remarkably high degrees of urban concentration that are incommensurate with their levels of urbanization. The cost of excessively high levels of urban concentration can be very high in terms of overpopulation, congestion, and productivity growth. One strand of...

This paper compares different fiscal integration schemes on the basis of their ability to finance public investments and resilience to debt distress and contagion. Complete integration schemes, where a central authority chooses the level of public investments with productivity-enhancing...

Many developing countries display remarkably high degrees of urban concentration that are incommensurate with their levels of urbanization. The cost of excessively high levels of urban concentration can be very high in terms of overpopulation, congestion, and productivity growth. One strand of...

Many developing countries display remarkably high degrees of urban concentration, incommensurate with their levels of urbanization. The cost of excessively high levels of urban concentration can be very high in terms of overpopulation, congestion, and productivity growth. One strand in the...

Climate change will impose large and differentiated tolls across countries. This paper suggests that economic fragility and resilience against climate change-driven natural shocks are shaped by: (i) the elasticity of input substitution in resource-intensive sectors, (ii) the trade regime, and...

Many developing countries display remarkably high degrees of urban concentration that are incommensurate with their levels of urbanization. The cost of excessively high levels of urban concentration can be very high in terms of overpopulation, congestion, and productivity growth. One strand of...