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...

This Paper develops a methodology to compute transport costs at low infra-country geographical levels. This simultaneously accounts for the real network infrastructure, a distance cost (fuel, repair, tolls), and a time opportunity cost (wages, insurance and general charges, vehicle use). When...

This Paper compares the observed distribution of the stock of infrastructures across the Spanish regions with the optimal allocation derived from a planning problem in which the observed degree of ex-post redistribution is taken as given. The results suggest that Spanish public investment policy...

Despite large regional policy expenditures, regional inequalities in Europe have not narrowed substantially over the last two decades, and by some measures have even widened. Income differences across states have fallen, but inequalities between regions within each state have risen. European...

The paper analyses governments’ trade-off between fiscal benefits and consumer surplus in privatization reforms of noncompetitive industries in developing countries. Under privatization, the control rights are transferred to private interests so that public subsidies decline. This benefit for...