I study how and why economic activity varies around regional borders. Spatial quasi-experimental variation around French departmental borders reveals discontinuous commuting and residential patterns. To tackle the endogenous border placement problem, I exploit a geometric border design proposed...

In this paper, we present some models to analyze the impacts of surface transportation logistic costs on importers and exporters decisions on which ports to choose for foreign trade operations. We employed a technique based on fractional split distributions, in which the dependent variable...

In this paper, we characterize the domestic cargo flows for imports and exports, from and towards the Brazilian ports. Based on this characterization, it is possible to calculate basic competitiveness indicators, for different cargo types. We also present a discussion on minimum efficient scales...

In this paper, we analyze the structure of geographic markets for the port sector in Brazil, identifying influence areas for its main ports. We employed spatial clustering algorithms, based on foreign trade data. We observed that the geographic factor seems to be extremely important in...

The agricultural frontier is expanding in the direction of Brazilian Cerrado (about 22% of the country surface), mainly due to the intensive use of knowledge and technology. This study intends to do a regional economic analysis and calculate indicators that can measure the dynamics of productive...

Local returns to scale in the labor market have been notoriously difficult to disentangle from increasing returns in the product market and from the spatial sorting of workers and firms as a source for regional variation in productivity. In this paper we use the introduction of high-speed rail...

In this paper, we introduce a distinction between interregional and intraregional transportation costs, in a footloose capital model. This allows assessing more precisely the effects of different types of transport policies, on the spatial distribution of activities. From a normative point of...

This paper analyzes the influence of transportation infrastructure, and in particular of the Regional Express Rail (RER), on employment and population growth in the Paris metropolitan area between 1968 and 2010. In order to make proper causal inference, we rely on historical instruments and...

The case for including agglomeration benefits within transport appraisal rests on an assumed causality between access to economic mass and productivity. Such causality is difficult to establish empirically because estimates may be subject to sources of bias from endogeneity and confounding. They...

In this paper, we analyze the impact of transportation infrastructure quantity and quality on regional economic production. We exploit an extensive panel dataset on the German county level (N=401), expressing the capital value and condition of highways between 2007 and 2016, to estimate a...