Purpose – This paper aims to analyze the statistical characteristics of changes in property forward prices. As highlighted in a survey conducted at the MIT Center for Real Estate in 2006, the relatively weak understanding in their prices is one of the most important barriers in their use. In...

The reversibility phenomenon in the repeat-sales index is a serious obstacle for derivatives products. This article provides a solution for this problem, using an informational reformulation of the RSI framework. We present first a theoretical formula (simple, easy to interpret, and easy to...

There is growing evidence that social pressure shapes firms' behavior. Given how sensitive communities are to downsizing, this suggests that firms are likely to be under strong social pressure when considering reducing employment. Using French linked employer-employee data, we show that social...

Within a 2 Country-4 Region setting we study the impact of a reduction in international transport costs over the localisation of firms inside countries.We find that even when countries are symmetrical, but as long as regions within countries are not entirely identical (whatever the differences),...

The paper presents a demo-economic model developed by Jean-Marie Cour, OECD-Club du Sahel. It is a prospective and spatial model of West African countries. The document does not present the results of the model, but examines its hypothesis and its equations witch are criticized.

Clustering of economic performance and growth in space has generated considerable research on the spillovers and linkages among geographical neighbours. In this paper, we study the growth process of a large sample of Brazilian municipalities for the period 1970-1996 and attempt to evaluate the...

In Africa, boundaries delineated during the colonial era now divide young independent states. By applying regression discontinuity designs to a large set of surveys covering the 1986-2001 period, this paper identifies many large and significant jumps in welfare at the borders between five...

To what extent did the colonial public policy influence the current regional inequalities in the French- speaking West Africa? This paper uses the differences in development outcomes across the areas of the former French West Africa to show the existence of colonial long term effects on...

Our study aims to measure the effects of spatial R&D spillovers on firms' patent production at the city level. We use an original method to estimate the spatial dimension of spillovers using count data. The method, based on a generalized cross entropy approach, allows us to test spatial...