This paper examines how firms in an emerging economy are affected by violence due to drug trafficking. Employing rich longitudinal plant-level data covering all of Mexico from 2005–2010, and using an instrumental variable strategy that exploits plausibly exogenous spatiotemporal variation in...

It is now stylized that, while the impact of ownership on firm productivity is unclear, product market competition can be expected to have a positive impact on productivity, thereby making entry (or contestability of markets) desirable. Traditional research in the context of entry has explored...

In this paper I argue that the manufacturing sector still has an important role to play in Africa's development. Despite failing to industrialize in the past, there may be a new window of opportunity. This is due to the convergence of what has been called "brilliant" new technologies associated...

We analyze how globalization has affected the sectoral anatomy of regional growth in Germany over the period 1978-2008. The aggregate German economy is characterized by a secular decline of manufacturing and a rise of modern service industries. This trend - also known as Petty's law - is not...

We compare a set of econometric studies that measure the effect of net internal migration in neoclassical models of long-run real income convergence and derive 67 comparable effect sizes. The precision-weighted estimate of beta convergence is about 2.7%. An increase in the net migration rate of...

Teleworking may increase the willingness to accept a longer commute. This paper presents new evidence of the effect of teleworking on the length of commutes. We use novel panel data from the Netherlands, for the years 2008-2018, and find stronger effects compared to studies that use older data....

We evaluate the impact of a place-based infrastructure development scheme directed towards India's most "backward" districts, on the performance of microenterprises. "Backward" districts were selected based on a transparent score-based assignment mechanism. Using a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity...

This paper develops a novel procedure for proxying economic activity with day-time satellite imagery across time periods and spatial units, for which reliable data on economic activity are otherwise not available. In developing this unique proxy, we apply machine-learning techniques to a...

We introduce a simple oligopolistic trade model with international transportation costs, and analyze the profitability and the social desirability of national vs. international mergers in relation to three different issues, (i) the level of trade freeness, (ii) the possibility of rent...

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to support manufacturing jobs...