After the flooding in 2002 European governments provided billions of Euros of financial assistance to their citizens. Although there is no doubt that solidarity and some sort of assistance is reasonable, the question arises why these damages were not sufficiently insured. One explanation why...

An analysis of the effects of natural hazards on society does not solely depend on a region's topographic or climatic exposure to natural processes, but the region's institutional resilience to natural processes that ultimately determines whether natural processes result in a natural hazard or...

Promising growth rates, increased trade, and competition among major global players for African resources have boosted the development and bargaining power of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in relation to the EU. However, Africa's least developed countries remain vulnerable to external shocks....

Although primary industries are important to developing countries, they have been largely unable to contribute to rapid growth. Systematically strengthening the development of local technology-intensive suppliers (t-suppliers), however, may contribute to both reinforcing the industrial base and...

Economists expect positive returns to investments in infrastructure. However a project with higher national returns might have less favourable effects on a regional level than the alternative. Therefore new infrastructure should also be assessed on a regional level, but econom(etr)ic evaluation...

We suggest a new class of cross-sectional space-time models based on local AR models and nearest neighbors using distances between observations. For the estimation we use a tightness prior for prediction of regional GDP forecasts. We extend the model to the model with exogenous variable model...

This paper develops a regional production function model for Swiss cantons that incorporates human capital together with spatial effects. Within a spatial panel framework we find that controlling for time effects the spatial spillover effect becomes insignificant. Our results are sensitive with...

We couple a one-dimensional energy balance climate model with heat transportation across latitudes, with an economic growth model. We derive temperature and damage distributions across locations and optimal taxes on fossil fuels which, in contrast to zero-dimensional Integrated Assessment...

We study rational expectations equilibrium problems and social optimum problems in infinite horizon spatial economies in the con- text of a Ramsey type capital accumulation problem with geographical spillovers. We identify sufficient local and global conditions for the emergence (or not) of...

The paper investigates the determinants of cosmopolitan cities. The hypothesis tested empirically is whether gradual improvements in distant communication boost the generation of ethnically heterogeneous cities. Consequently to easier communication, movers increasingly rely on an enlarged...