This paper investigates whether self-employed households use consumer loans – in particular instalment loans and overdrafts – to finance business activities. Controlling for financial and non-financial household variables we show that self-employed households particularly use personal...

This paper uses a quasi-experimental strategy to disclose utterly political reasons behind the allocation of intergovernmental transfers in a federal state. We apply a regression discontinuity design in close elections to identify the effect of political alignment on federal transfers to...

In the 1980s, many U.S. cities initiated programs reserving a proportion of government contracts for minority-owned businesses. The staggered introduction of these set-aside programs is used to estimate their impacts on the self-employment and employment rates of African-American men. Black...

Crime has been argued to have important externalities. We investigate the relationship between violent crime and an important type of behaviour: individuals' participation in their local area through walking and physical activity. We use a sample of nearly 1 million people residing in over 320...

A large part of the Italian welfare system is designed and implemented at the very local level, leading to a high degree of heterogeneity in the type and the generosity of available programs across the country. As a consequence, studies of welfare use based on standard household surveys may fail...

This paper analyzes the interaction between migration of high-skilled labor and publicly financed investment. We develop a theoretical model with multiple, ex ante identical jurisdictions where individuals decide on education and subsequent emigration. Migration decisions are based on...

We identify regional public investment priorities by studying the development of the water pipe system in the largest district in Poland. For this purpose, we take advantage of a major administrative re-form, implemented on 1 January 1999, which substantially changed the structure of Polish...

This paper explores the long run relationship between public and private investment in the euro area in terms of capital stocks and gross investment flows. Panel techniques ac-counting for international spillovers are employed. While private and public capital stocks are cointegrated, the...

We investigate the effects of the Indonesian decentralization and democratization process on budget allocation at the sub-national level. Based on panel data for 271 Indonesian districts for the years of 1994 to 2009, we address the determinants of local investment expenditures in public...

We investigate the interdependence of debt financing and R&D activities of young firms.Using micro-level data of the KfW/ZEW Start-up Panel, our estimation results show that firmcharacteristics are more important than personal characteristics of the founders for explainingyoung firms’...