This paper evaluates the economic impact of the $14 billion preparatory investments for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. We use satellite data on night light luminosity at municipality and electoral district level as a proxy for economic development, applying synthetic control methods...

The European Union (EU) provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states to allow them to catch up with the EU average. Under the Objective 1 scheme, NUTS2 regions with a GDP per capita level below 75% of the EU average qualify for structural funds transfers from the central EU budget....

The objective of this paper is to examine the nature and magnitude of the effects of infrastructure provision on regional economic performance. The empirical evidence of our analysis is based on difference-in-difference estimation linking the changes in the growth rate of regional-level economic...

This article investigates the role played by public capital in increasing the productivity levels in Italy. For construction of the regional series for the public capital stock over the period 1996 to 2003, the study benefits from the use of the rich dataset on public expenditure, recently...

The European Union (EU) provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states to allow them to catch up with the EU average. Under the Objective 1 scheme, NUTS2 regions with a GDP per capita level below 75% of the EU average qualify for structural funds transfers from the central EU budget....

This paper studies the effects of hosting Olympic Games on the regional economy in the short- and long-run. For identification, runners-up in the Olympic bidding process are used to construct the counterfactual for Olympic host regions. In the short-run, hosting Summer Olympics boosts regional...

This paper studies the effects of hosting Olympic Games on the regional economy in the short and long run. For identification, runners-up in the Olympic bidding process are used to construct the counterfactual for Olympic host regions. In the short run, hosting Summer Olympics boosts regional...

This paper investigates on the role played by public capital in increasing the productivity levels in Italy. For the construction of the regional series for the public capital stock over the period 1996-2003, the study benefits from the use of the rich dataset on public expenditure, recently...

We estimate the long-term effect of public R&D on growth in manufacturing by analyzing new data from the Cold War era Space Race. We develop a novel empirical strategy that leverages US-Soviet rivalry in space technology to isolate windfall R&D spending. Our results demonstrate that public R&D...

The effects of a policy measure often reach the consumer only after one or more intermediatesteps, for instance because the measure lowers the cost of an input for an industry producinga consumer good. This paper is concerned with the question how to measure such indirect effectscorrectly under...