After the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, Northern Sumatra experienced three shocks: a negative shock from the tsunami itself and the Nias earthquake that followed in 2005; a positive shock from the massive allocation of recovery funds; and another positive shock from the peace deal between the...

This paper studies the effect of institutions on trade flows, using a gravity model approach. Standard gravity equations incorporate factors such as geographical proximity, language, trade policy and common history as explanatory factors for variation in bilateral trade that reflect the costs of...

This paper investigates the influence of perception of natural disaster risks on the probability of local people to participate in a hypothetical disaster microinsurance. We use household data for a specific disaster risk of the Mount Merapi in Java. We find that respondent's perception of...

Urban (re-)development projects may generate various positive and negative spatial externalities to employers. The assessment of such benefits is fraught with many methodological and empirical problems. This study aims to assess the order of magnitude of expected net benefits for incumbent...

We investigate the impact of the recent global recession on European countries and regions. We first identify the heterogeneous impact of the global recession on individual European countries and regions. We then discuss three classes of explanations for spatial heterogeneity in the severity of...

This paper develops a two-sector endogenous growth model with a dual labor market caused by the operation of trade unions. Trade unions strive for the extraction of rents from the growth generating imperfectly competitive primary sector. This union behavior results in a non-competitive wage...