In recent decades industrial clusters and agglomerations were recognized as drivers of regional and often national economic growth and competitiveness. Based on this cluster policy has been widely used to spur economic change, especially on the sub-national level. The public support to cluster...

The purpose of this article is to contribute for the debate about the construction of governance spaces which guarantee the continuity of the regional development public policies, thus articulating actors and optimizing strategic projects in order to improve regional competitiveness ans...

In this study we investigate how both local environment and individual characteristics explain incidence of corruption. More specifically, we explore how city size, and residing in a capital city influence the two aspects of corruption, notably in individuals' contact with officials, and in the...

"Urbanization and Decentralization: The changing urban-rural linkages and opportunities of decentralization of services" Joachim von Braun, Center for Development Research (ZEF) University of Bonn, Germany This paper explores the relations between urbanization and decentralization. Ever stronger...

Forests can play a major role in climate regulation by reducing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Forests also provide a range of other ecological goods and services such as biodiversity and watershed protection and amenity benefits. On the other hand,...

The purpose of this chapter is to survey recent research on housing markets and policy in what used to be called the “second” and “third” worlds. We adopt the labels “transition” economies to refer to countries as disparate as Russia and Vietnam, and “developing” to refer to...