What are the long run consequences of planning and providing basic infrastructure in neighborhoods, where people build their own homes? We study "Sites and Services" projects implemented in seven Tanzanian cities during the 1970s and 1980s, half of which provided infrastructure in previously...

The path of urbanization around the world and in particular in China has been rapid. This study addresses measurement of a composite index of networking among key components of societal infrastructure and how it affects the process of urbanization. This study has a number of objectives. First we...

The aging population of European cities raises enormous challenges with regard to employment, pensions, health care and other age-related services. The housing preferences of the aging population are changing rapidly where more and more people want to live independent lives for as long as...

The paper argues that access to public infrastructure plays a crucial role on the presence of private schools in a community, as it could not only minimise the cost of production, but also ensure a high return to private investment. Results using community, school and child/household-level PROBE...

This paper examines bureaucratic delay within the allocation of small infrastructure projects by sub-municipal governments in Bolivia, and it presents a randomized field experiment designed to improve public service delivery by promoting voice, transparency, and accountability among grassroots...

We design an infrastructure experiment in Mexico to evaluate the impact of street pavement on housing values and household outcomes. We find that the provision of street pavement raises housing values by 16% and land values by 54%, according to professional appraisals. Using homeowner...

This paper examines the effects of renovating deteriorated public spaces on local socioeconomic outcomes. We analyze the impacts of a randomized experiment implemented in 28 fragile neighborhoods of Santiago, Chile. Our findings indicate that the renovation of local squares led to increased use...

In many European countries, community entrepreneurship is increasingly considered as a means to initiate small-scale urban regeneration. However, residents in deprived communities are often viewed to lack key entrepreneurial attributes and skills. This paper reports a unique experiment in the...

This paper examines wage differentials between public sector and private sector workers in Australia. After controlling for observed characteristics and individual fixed effects, we show that on average workers in the public sector earn about 5.1% percent more hourly wages than those in the...

This paper considers the public and private sector wage earners in Egypt and examines their wage distribution during 1998-2012 using Egyptian Labor Market Panel Survey. We estimate the public-private sector wage gap with Mincer wage equations both at the mean and at different quantiles of the...