The effect of Swedish regional investment grants during 1990-1999 on firm performance, in terms of returns on equity and number of employees, were studied using a propensity-score matching-method to control for sample selection. Firms that received grants did not perform better in terms of...

This paper focuses on manufacturing employment growth across the 26 states of Brazil. We employ the Glaeser et al. (1992) approach to identify the role played by knowledge externalities in growth and convergence. To assess robustness of the results, we compare cross-section models, dynamic panel...

Technological change and innovation and are central to the quest for regional development. In the globally-connected knowledge-driven economy, the relevance of agglomeration forces that rely on proximity continues to increase, paradoxically despite declining real costs of information,...

The supply of motorways reduces travel time costs by road, affecting thus the demand for road transport. Besides these intramodal effects, there exist intermodal effects too as far as motorways have impact on the demand of the competing modes. In this paper we establish and estimate a model that...

Many regional governments in developed countries design programs to improve the competitiveness of local firms. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of public programs whose aim is to enhance the performance of firms located in Catalonia (Spain). We compare the performance of publicly...

Land degradation has been one of the major areas of concern in Ethiopia. Governments and development agencies have invested substantial resources to promote land management technologies and reduce land degradation. However, there is little understanding of the impacts that land management...

In this note, propensity score matching (PSM) methods are applied to data from the 2005 International Social Survey Program Work Orientations (ISSP-WO) survey to examine the public sector pay premium in New Zealand. Taking account of a wide range of worker characteristics and attitudes, job...

In this paper we examine the long-term effects of job displacement due to establishment closures in Sweden on labor market status. Using linked employeremployee data we are able to identify all employees displaced in 1987 and follow them until 1999. The displaced employees are compared to a...

The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the effect of offering educational opportunities as a strategy to recruit health workers to rural areas. Tanzania, like the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, has a very small and unequally distributed health workforce. It has been suggested that rural...

Seasonal work programs are increasingly advocated by international aid agencies as a way of enabling both developed and developing countries to benefit from migration. They are argued to provide workers with new skills and allow them to send remittances home, without the receiving country having...