This paper examines the causal effect of a change in the nomination scheme of the city manager from appointment by the local council to election by the citizens on urban development policies. Using the fact that the timing of the reform was as good as random in municipalities of the German state...

In the paper, we test the effect of local development, regional and local policies on the location decisions and productivity of firms. Development indicators include local research and development activity or education while policy decisions used in this study encompass for example tax rates,...

This paper provides some elements to explain the observed takeover in some urban areas of a new kind of elite associated with new economy jobs, also known as "bourgeois bohème" (bobos). This takeover has been associated with greater investment in urban amenities and "clean" means of transport,...

In 1995, China began a profound reform of its state-owned enterprises. We first describe and characterize this progress in two areas: privatization of small state-owned enterprises at the county level and mass lay-offs of excess state workers at the city level. Local governments have initiated...

This paper uses political reservations for women in India to study the impact of women's leadership on policy decision. In 1998, one third of all leadership positions of Village Councils in West Bengal were randomly selected to be reserved for a woman: in these councils only women could be...

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have become important tools to promote a variety of public goals and policies. In the past years much attention has been given to the expected social benefits from deploying ICT in different fields (transportation, education, public participation...

The horror of India's urban spaces cannot be understood without recognizing the core errors in planning and in the approach of infrastructural development. These stem mainly from the low FSI's that are used, the lack of any recognition of central place needs of different economic activities, the...