We study the effect of spatial inequality on economic activity. Given that the relationship is highly simultaneous in nature, we use exogenous variation in geographic features to construct an instrument for spatial inequality, which is independent from any man-made factors. Inequality measures...

There is growing recognition in the economics literature that African countries are characterized by very large economic disparities across subnational regions. Yet the lack of systematic and reliable empirical data at subnational levels of aggregation has made it difficult to explore possible...

We examine the recent literature that studies the spatial distribution of economic activity across both space and time. We discuss the methodological advances enabling the incorporation of dynamic forces of economic activity--such as endogenous innovation, forward-looking location choices,...

Previous studies have found that generalized trust positively affects innovation at the country and regional level. We extend this literature by arguing that there are four reasons to believe that the trust-innovation relationship is heterogeneous across geographic space. First, there is a...