In this paper, we study self-employment in a theoretical setting derived from wage-efficiency spatial models, where leisure and effort at work are complementary. We develop a spatial model of self-employment in which effort at work and commuting are negatively related, and thus the probability...

This paper studies how the strength of social ties are affected by the geographical location of other individuals and their social capital. We characterize the equilibrium in terms of both social interactions and social capital. We show that lower travel costs increase not only the interaction...

This paper provides a different basis than previous analyses for regional bloc formation and regional migration. Due to low bargaining power and fixed costs, small states face a severe disadvantage in negotiations with the rest of the world and might benefit by forming a regional bloc. The study...

This paper studies the fact that 37 percent of the internal migrants in China do not sign a labor contract with their employers, as revealed in a nationwide survey. These contract-free jobs pay lower hourly wages, require longer weekly work hours, and provide less insurance or on-the-job...

The world is replete with spatial frictions. Shipping goods across cities entails trade frictions. Commuting within cities causes urban frictions. How important are these frictions in shaping the spatial economy? We develop and quantify a novel framework to address this question at three...

Due to economic interconnectedness across regions, locally confined violent conflict may have welfare effects far beyond directly affected areas. This paper focuses on Somalia’s al-Shabaab insurgency and investigates whether the food transportation network propagates the effects of violent...

This paper investigates the feasibility of creating a common-currency union consisting of 16 countries in Southern Africa. We estimate an augmented-gravity model that includes public deficit, public debt, public expenditure, inflation, and the foreign reserves position. We also integrate...

The expansion of regionalism has spawned an extensive theoretical literature analysing the effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on trade flows. In this paper we focus on FTAs (also called European agreements) between the European Union (EU-15) and the Central and Eastern European countries...

There is substantial empirical evidence showing that peer effects matter in many activities. The workhorse model in empirical work on peer effects is the linear-in-means (LIM) model, whereby it is assumed that agents are linearly affected by the mean action of their peers. We develop a new...