With the rapid expansion of private forest plantations worldwide, their impacts on local development are under scrutiny by NGOs and researchers alike. This study investigates the impacts of private forest plantations on local infrastructure and social services in rural Tanzania. We take a...

We analyse whether migration is an adaptation that households employ to cope with climate in Ghana and Nigeria. If migration is part of the present adaptation portfolio of households in developing countries, it is reasonable to expect that it will also be an adaptation to future climate change....

This paper estimates the returns to household income due to improved access to electricity in rural India. We examine the effect of connecting a household to the grid and the quality of electricity, defined as hours of daily supply. The analysis is based on two rounds of a representative panel...

This paper offers a new theoretical approach to urban squatting, reflecting the view that squatters and formal residents compete for land within a city. The key implication of this view is that squatters “squeeze” the formal market, raising the price paid by formal residents. The squatter...

We analyse how spatial disparities in innovation activities, coupled with migration costs, affect economic geography, growth and regional inequality. We provide conditions for existence and uniqueness of a spatial equilibrium, and for the endogenous emergence of industry clusters. Spatial...

Dutch cities which combine a favorable location in terms of distance to work with a variety of urban amenities appear to be the most attractive locations for people to live. Relatively safe cities, offering a variety of history and culture events, as well as good restaurants have significantly...

Economic activity tends to cluster. This results in productivity gains. For policy makers this offers an opportunity to formulate and promote policies that foster clustering of economic activity. Paradoxically, although agglomeration rents are often found in empirical research a rationale for...

Using the German local business tax as a testing ground, we empirically investigate the impact of firm agglomeration on municipal tax setting behavior. The analysis exploits a rich data source on the population of German firms to construct detailed measures for the communities' agglomeration...

We develop a heterogeneous-firms model with trade in goods, labor mobility and credit constraints due to moral hazard. Mitigating financial frictions reduces the incentive of high-skilled workers to migrate to one region such that an unequal distribution of industrial activity becomes less...

Applying the methodology developed by Duranton and Overman (2005, 2008), we analyze localization and dispersion of firms in China. Using a unique and detailed dataset on manufacturing firms in China, we are able to follow the changes in location patterns of firms between 2002 and 2008. Our...