In the past few years sustainability and sustainable development have become important concepts widespread over the world. There is no agreement on a common definition of sustainability, but there is a general need to measure and assess sustainability in different geographical and spatial...

This paper offers a new theoretical approach to urban squatting, reflecting the view that squatters and formal residents compete for land within a city. The key implication of this view is that squatters squeeze" the formal market, raising the price paid by formal residents. The squatter...

The objective of this paper is to show how the same market failures that contribute to urban sprawl also contribute to urban blight. The paper develops a simple dynamic model in which new suburban and older central-city properties compete for mobile residents. The level of housing services...

The analysis of common goods needs to look very carefully at the characteristics of the goods and of the social situations of their provision. Different characteristics lead to different strategic constellations and therefore to different opportunities for institutional solutions to the problems...

Lobbying activities bias the political decision making process. There tend to be deviations from the socially optimal solutions. This paper shows that, in an international context, this bias is not necessarily harmful from an economic-welfare point of view. It may correct externalities that...

This paper surveys recent research on decentralization and natural disasters. The first part discusses results from theoretical models that have been used to study the issues that arise when natural disasters occur in a country with more than one level of government. The next section discusses...

Reducing disparities among regions within European countries together with economic development is the aim of European and national structural policies. In particular, a European grant contributes to the German governmental program for reducing and equalizing regional unemployment. The goal is...

German structural policy is characterized by a composite indicator with three targets:(1) minimization of unemployment, (2) maximization of GDP, and (3) equalization of regional unemployment rates. The composite indicator with given target weights is maximized subject to budget constraints and...

In this paper we analyze if an 'urban mortality penalty' exists for today's developing countries, repeating the history of industrialized nations during the 19th century. We analyze the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) of 19 Sub-Saharan African countries for differences in child and adult...

The basic purpose of the study is to find a metric-variable of competitiveness for each country's tax regime and to assess the impact of tax regime differentiation across the common market. A country adopting competitive taxation policies manages to attract productive factors, funds and...