The paper proposes an econometric approach for quantifying jointly the geographical scope of commuting as well as the various forms of agglomeration economies originating from metropolitan centers. Adopting an urban economics perspective, and using land prices to measure their aggregate effects,...

This paper develops two extensions of the dynamic model presented in Melitz (2003). The first extension consists in the introduction of technology choice between three alternative production technologies: L, M and H. L is assumed to be the same as Melitz’s single production technology, while M...

This paper presents descriptive evidence suggesting that there may be something to be learned about the future patterns of international offshoring from the recent patterns of “domestic offshoring”, the relocation of activities across regions within countries. Industries appear to offshore...

Does regional unemployment increase or rather decrease entrepreneurial activity? Although this question has been hotly debated among researchers for decades the answers yielded so far are ambiguous and inconclusive. The paper proposes an innovative approach that takes not only interregional...

Feenstra and Ma (2008) develop a monopolistic competition model where firms choose their optimal product scope by balancing the profits from a new variety against the costs of 'cannibalizing' sales of existing varieties. While more productive firms always have a higher market share, there is no...

NGO aid is still widely believed to be superior to official aid (ODA). However, the incentives of NGOs to excel and target aid to the poor and deserving are increasingly disputed. We contribute to the emerging literature on the allocation of NGO aid by performing panel Tobit estimations for...

The paper analyses a partial equilibrium outsourcing model with Cournot competition in intermediate good production. Final production is located in western Europe, whereas the intermediate good can be manufactured by a western (outsourcing) or eastern European supplier (offshore outsourcing)....

Using a new dataset for 41 German non-governmental organizations (NGOs), we analyze the allocation of NGO aid across recipient countries in a Tobit regression framework. By identifying for each NGO the degree of public refinancing, we address the largely unresolved issue of whether financial...

Shocks driving the business cycle have different effects on low-skilled and high-skilled workers. This paper studies the effects of temporary and permanent sector-specific shocks in a New Keynesian matching model. We show that temporary sector-specific shocks have reallaction and aggregate...

The European Emissions Trading Scheme for CO2 established in 2005 is the world's largest emissions trading scheme. Since it covers only some sectors of the European economies it can nevertheless not ensure that the Kyoto targets are reached at minimal cost. This paper first analyzes the...