The paper studies the impact of market integration on investment incentives in non-competitive industries. It distinguishes between investment in transportation and production cost-reducing technologies. Each domestic firm is controlled by a national regulator in a common market made of two...

We show that space matters in designing the optimal provision of local public goods (LPGs). Geography imposes particular institutional structure of local governments due to the overlapping of market areas associated with different LPGs. The optimum can be decentralized through local governments...

This paper estimates the impact of public investment on regional economic growth and convergence at the NUTS III level in Greece. Using a new database of public expenditure per region for the period 1978-2007, it proposes a model which captures not just the impact of public investment in Greek...

We analyze competition between vertically integrated infrastructure operators that provide access in different geographical areas. A regulator may impose a uniform access price, set local access rates, or deregulate access locally. We analyze the impact of these alternative regulatory regimes on...

Our aim is to explain how a small country can be viable as an international banking center (IBC). We build a model in which mobile investors choose between two banking centers located respectively in a small country and in a large country. These countries compete in two instruments, taxation and...

Transfers to individuals, firms, and regions are often regulated by threshold rules, giving rise to a regression discontinuity design. An example are transfers provided by the European Commission to regions of EU member states below a certain income level. Researchers have focused on estimation...

This paper presents a model of strategic locational choice by duopolistic firms in an urban area where consumer locations are endogenous and where a public facility is exogenously fixed. A welfare analysis taking their strategic behaviour into account is conducted. It is shown that the firms'...

A model of a small open economy with open capital and labour markets is presented. Labour demand is based on capital mobility and increasing returns in production. Migration decisions are based on the relative attractiveness of regions in terms of the stock of infrastructure, including its tax...

This paper analyses the determinants of public expenditures allocated to investment. We perform welfare analysis in an overlapping generations model with public consumption, public investment, debt and taxes. The optimal public investment share depends positively on the productive contribution...

This paper examines the effects of three alternative rules for public investment on output growth in a model with private and public capital. The rules considered are: (i) a fixed ratio of public capital to output; (ii) a fixed growth rate for public capital; and (iii) a fixed ratio of public...