This paper studies the causal effect of transport infrastructure on the spatial concentration of economic activity. Leveraging a new global dataset of geo-located Chinese government-financed projects over the period from 2000 to 2014 together with measures of spatial inequality based on...

In this paper, we evaluate the efficiency of the French State aid plan for broadband deployment, the Plan France Très Haut Débit. According to State aid rules, public subsidies should not be substitute for private investment and should target areas with market failures. We estimate a...

We show how temporary ownership by private equity firms affects industry structure, competition and welfare. Temporary ownership leads to strong investment incentives because equilibrium resale prices are determined by buyers incentives to block rivals from obtaining assets. These incentives...

Trade finance shortfalls now appear regularly. Does this matter for trade expansion and economic development in developing countries? Global trade finance has resumed following the 2009 global financial crisis. However, the pattern of recovery has been uneven across countries and categories of...

While conditions in trade finance markets returned to normality in the main routes of trade, the structural difficulties of poor countries in accessing trade finance have not disappeared – and might have been worsened during and after the global financial crisis. In fact, there is a consistent...

Trade finance, particularly in the form of short-term letters of credit has received favourable capital treatment new Basel III rules. However, concerns have been expressed over the potential negative "unintended consequences" of the newly created leverage ratio for trade. This paper offers a...

This paper investigates the factors (such as different sources of financing, energy audits and internal monitoring activities) affecting the propensity of European small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to adopt energy efficiency measures (EEMs). For this purpose, a Probit model is estimated...

This paper analyses the stochastic behaviour of Private Equity returns (a measure of profitability) applying fractional integration methods to an extensive dataset including quarterly data spanning the last four decades for various geographical areas (US, Europe, Asia/Pacific, the Rest of the...

This study evaluates the effectiveness of contracting out mandatory publicly provided counselling and training for long-term unemployed in Flanders (Belgium) to private for-profit and non-profit organisations (FPOs and NPOs). A multivariate transition model exploits timing-of-events and novel...

This paper derives and justifies a procedurally fair bidding mechanism and reviews experiments that apply the mechanism to public projects provision. In the experiments, not all parties benefit from provision, and the projects' costs can be negative. The experimental results indicate that the...