The Marshall Plan (1948-1952) was the largest aid transfer in history. This paper estimates its effects on Italy's postwar economic development. It exploits differences between Italian provinces in the value of reconstruction grants they received. Provinces that could modernize more their...

Italy and Germany have similar geographical differences in productivity - North more productive than South in Italy; West more productive than East in Germany - but have adopted different models of wage bargaining. Italy sets wages based on nationwide contracts that allow for limited local wage...

In Japan, the manufacturing has become geographically dispersed in the 1990s, when the import share has risen after the historic exchange rate appreciation. As is consistent with the interpretation that import penetration undermines regional input-output linkages, our regressions detect the...

Mortality was extremely high in the industrial cities of the 19th century, but little is known about the role played by pollution in generating this pattern, due largely to a lack of direct pollution measures. I overcome this problem by combining data on the local composition of industries in...