This paper analyzes the impact of the German autobahn net on the economic performance of German regions. To address endogeneity and reverse causation problems, we use historical instrument variables, i.e. a plan of the railroad net in 1890 and a plan of the autobahn net in 1937. We find a...

This paper investigates the development of poverty in Sweden using micro data derived from tax files for the city of Göteborg for the years 1925, 1936, 1947, 1958 as well as more recent (1983, 1994 and 2003) information. We define poverty as living in a household with a disposable income lower...

This research provides an explanation for high literacy, economic growth and societal developments in the Netherlands in the period before the Dutch Republic. We establish a link between the Brethren of the Common Life (BCL), a religious community founded by Geert Groote in the city of Deventer...

We analyze the optimal regional pattern of public employment in an information-constrained second-best redistribution policy showing that regionally differentiated public employment can serve as an expenditure side tagging device, bypassing or relaxing the equity-efficiency trade-off. The...

We study the dispersion in rates of provincial economic- and TFP growth in China. Our results show that regional growth patterns can be understood as a function of several interrelated factors, which include investment in physical capital, human capital, and infrastructure capital; the infusion...

Models of the new economic geography share a number of common conclusions, but also exhibit notable differences, in particular with respect to the shape of the location pattern and the efficiency of the market equilibrium. This reflects the fact that these models rely heavily on specific...

The core-periphery model by Krugman (1991) has two 'dramatic' implications: catastrophic agglomeration and locational hysteresis. We study this seminal model with CES instead of Cobb-Douglas upper tier preferences. This small generalization suffices to change these stark implications. For a wide...

It is widely believed that unaffordable housing could drive businesses away and thus impede job growth. However, there is little evidence to support this view. This paper presents a simple model to clarify how housing affordability is linked to employment growth and why unaffordable housing...

We study spatial changes in labour market inequality for US states and MSAs using Census and American Community Survey data between 1980 and 2010. We report evidence of significant spatial variations in education employment shares and in the college wage premium for US states and MSAs, and show...

In this paper, we investigate the use of interactive effect or linear factor models in regional policy evaluation. We contrast treatment effect estimates obtained by Bai (2009)'s least squares method with the popular difference in difference estimates as well as with estimates obtained using...