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...

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...

We evaluate the impact of a major European state aid programme for broadband deployment applied to rural areas in the German state of Bavaria in the years 2010 and 2011. Using matched difference-in-differences estimation strategies, we find that aided municipalities have – depending on...

The cost of complying with a sanitary standard is certain. However, such regulatory measure is a source of uncertainty for exporting firms in relation to border rejections. Shipments may fail to pass inspections and may be refused entry into the importing country. We examine how the risk of...

The additionality principle says that the funds of the European Union should not replace, but be an addition to national regional policy funds. The benchmark for the co-funding is that the EU bears 50% of total costs associated with regional projects eligible for EU support. In some regions,...

The EU’s cohesion policy should now be confluent with the goals of the Lisbon strategy by promoting growth and employment. In this context, the promotion of a concept called regional innovation system has recently become important in the EU for guaranteeing long-term regional economic growth....

We trace the rise of the so called oligarchs in post-Soviet Russia and examine their relationship to income distribution in Russia. When Russia moved to a market economy in the 1990s a new business elite evolved. Russia's distinctive path towards market economy, among other factors, gave rise to...

This paper questions the widely applied parallelism of demographic and economic development in characterizing urban shrinkage in Germany, and argues that the usage of population change as a single indicator leads to incorrect policy recommendations for combating urban shrinkage. As the cases of...