Rapid urbanization, and particularly the associated problems of urban poverty, unsustainable development and environmental degradation, pose an enormous challenge to many developing countries. In the last decade more foreign aid has been diverted to urbanization and green city development. This...

This paper addresses the timing of a location's historical transition from rural to urban activity. We test whether urbanization occurs sooner in places with higher agricultural potential and comparatively lower transport costs, using worldwide data that divide the earth's surface at half-degree...

In this (introductory) paper, we present i) some basic figures about the rise of cities in the developing world, and ii) the four papers of this special issue. This paper and the other four papers in the issue intend to bring the reality of cities of the developing world in the 21st century to...

Public sector activities are often neglected in the economic approaches used to analyze the driving forces behind urban growth. The institutional status of a regional capital is a crucial aspect of public sector activities. This paper reports on a quasi-natural experiment on county towns in East...

This paper develops a model in which market structure is determined endogenously by the choice of intermediation mode. We consider two representative business modes of intermediation that are widely used in real-life markets: one is a middleman mode where an intermediary holds inventories which...

Social interactions are considered pivotal to urban agglomeration forces. This study employs a unique dataset on mobile phone calls to examine how social interactions differ across cities and peripheral areas. We first show that geographical distance is highly detrimental to interpersonal...

We analyze the role of distance from a university in the decision to attend higher education in Germany. Students who live near a university can avoid moving and the increased living expenses by commuting. Thus, transaction cost arguments would suggest that the greater the distance to the...

In this paper we implement a non-dynamic panel threshold model for fifty U.S. states to better understand the factors determining changes in Okun's Law. We test for asymmetries in Okun's Law controlling for changes in industry employment. We find changes in output on unemployment are least...

This paper investigates the consequences of the legalization of around 600,000 immigrants by the unexpectedly elected Spanish government of Zapatero following the terrorist attacks of March 2004 (Garcia-Montalvo (2011)). Using detailed data from payroll-tax revenues, we estimate that each newly...

The papers analyses regional differences in EU referenda results in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In each of the three countries, other things being equal, high income regions were significantly more pro-European than low-income ones, while regions with a high share of ethnic minorities were...