This study assesses the empirical relevance of the Harris-Todaro model at high levels of urbanization a feature that characterizes an increasing number of developing countries, which were largely rural when the model was created 50 years ago. Using data from Brazil, the paper compares observed...

The emergence of slums is a common feature in a country's path towards urbanization, structural transformation and development. Based on salient micro and macro evidence of Brazilian labor, housing and education markets, we construct a simple model to examine the conditions for slums to emerge....

This paper evaluates a large urban public works program randomly rolled out across neighborhoods of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We find that the program increased public employment and reduced private labor supply among beneficiaries and improved local amenities in treated locations. We then combine...

This paper explores the effects of weather-induced rural-urban migration on urban labor and housing markets in Brazil. In order to identify causal effects, it uses weather shocks to the rural municipalities of origin of migrants. We show that larger migration shocks led to an increase in...

This paper computes sectoral contributions to real labour productivity growth in Malta during the two decades since 2000. The aim is to give an account of the sectoral developments affecting Malta's productivity growth in the twenty years since 2000, in the context of significant structural...

Unlike most countries, Korea did not implement a lockdown in its battle against COVID-19, instead successfully relying on testing and contact tracing. Only one region, Daegu-Gyeongbuk, had a significant number of infections, traced to a religious sect. This allows us to estimate the causal...

The recent implementation of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) in January 2005 created new financial risks for emitting firms. To deal with these risks, options are traded since October 2006. Because the EU ETS is a new market, the relevant underlying model for option pricing is still a...

This paper examines the effects of monetary policy shocks on UK regional economic growth and dispersion in a novel Constrained Mixed Frequency Vector Autoregressive framework. Compared to a standard MFVAR, the model partially accounts for missing quarterly observations for regional growth by...

This paper uses a FAVAR model with external instruments to show that the policy uncertainty shocks are recessionary and are associated with an increase in the exit of firms and a decrease in entry and in the stock price with total factor productivity rising in the medium run. To explain this...