This study investigates the economic impact of China's "stadium diplomacy" in Sub-Saharan Africa. Exploiting the staggered timing of the construction in a difference-in-differences framework, we analyze the effect of Chinese-built and financed stadiums on local economic development. Employing...

We present a novel approach for analyzing the effects of EU cohesion policy on local economic activity. For all municipalities in the border area of the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland, we collect project-level data on EU funding in the period between 2007 and 2013. Using night light emission...

We examine whether concerns about lenders' discrimination based on community racial characteristics can be empirically substantiated in the context of neighborhoods on and near American Indian reservations. Drawing on a large-scale dataset consisting of individual-level credit bureau records, we...

Using a natural experiment from Germany, we show that temporary place-based subsidies generate persistent effects on economic density. We identify employment and capital formation as main channels for higher income per square kilometer. As the spatial regression discontinuity design allows us to...

We show, for the first time, a causal effect of local economic growth on infant mortality. We use geo-referenced data for non-migrating mothers from 46 developing countries and 128 DHS survey rounds and combine it with nighttime luminosity data at a granular level. Using mother fixed effects we...

We examine how new airport infrastructure influences regional tourism. Identification is based on the conversion of a military air base into a regional commercial airport in the German state of Bavaria. The new airport opened in 2007 and promotes travelling to the touristic region Allgäu in the...

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...

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,...

China's Hukou system poses severe restrictions on labor mobility. This paper assesses the consequences of relaxing these restrictions for China's internal economic geography. We base our analysis on a new economic geography model. First, we obtain estimates of the important model parameters on...

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....