This paper develops an approach that allows constructing regional proxies of government effectiveness at a highly dis-aggregated level. Our idea builds on the well documented interdependence between institutions and exports, which allows estimating the latent government effectiveness using...

This paper studies regional treatment effects of infrastructure projects on economic growth, employment and intermodal transport volumes. The recent Belt and Road Initiative provides an experiment that can be evaluated using matching econometrics. Our results show that the establishment of a new...