The European Union (EU) provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states to allow them to catch up with the EU average. Under the Objective 1 scheme, NUTS2 regions with a GDP per capita level below 75% of the EU average qualify for structural funds transfers from the central EU budget....

We investigate the prevalence and determinants of ethnic favoritism, i.e., preferential public policies targeted at the political leader's ethnic group. We construct a panel dataset of 2,022 ethnographic regions from 139 countries with annual observations from 1992 to 2012, and use nighttime...

We study an overlapping generations model of human capital accumulation with threshold effects using regional data for West Germany. Our basic goal is to shed light on what makes German regions grow. The paper finds that the relative income distribution appears to be stratifying into a trimodal...

A theoretical model describes the local choice of the tax rate on capital income. It establishes preferences and various fiscal conditions - including the tax rates of competing jurisdictions - as determinants of the tax rate. The empirical implications are tested using a large panel of...

This paper assesses sources of productivity spillovers in China's electric and electronic manufacturing industry using a rich panel data-set of 25,360 firms observed over the period 2004-2007. This industry is characterized by its important reliance on technology. In particular, the paper...

This paper assesses the role of intra-sectoral spillovers in total factor productivity across Chinese producers in the chemical industry. We use a rich panel data-set of 12,552 firms observed over the period 2004 - 2006 and model output by the firm as a function of skilled and unskilled labor,...

In a theoretical model local jurisdictions provide a public input an d a public consumption good financed by a tax on capital income. When deciding about tax rate and budget structure the jurisdictions will generally respond to each others fiscal choices irrespective of whether the policy is...

Whether a firm is able to attract foreign capital and whether it may participate at the export market depends on whether the fixed costs associated with doing so are at least covered by the incremental operating profits. This paper provides evidence that success for some firms in attracting...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of the East German economy at the firm level using an unbalanced panel over the transition period 1994 to 1998. We adopt a translog stochastic frontier model to estimate technical efficiency in eastern and western Germany. The results...