A large literature documents the positive influence of a city's skill structure on its rate of economic growth. By contrast, the effect of a city's age structure on its economic growth has been a hitherto largely neglected area of research. This paper hypothesizes that cities with more...

A variety of approaches to delineate metropolitan areas have been developed. Systematic comparisons of these approaches in terms of the urban landscape that they generate are however few. Our paper aims to fill this gap. We focus on Indonesia and make use of the availability of data on commuting...

A variety of approaches to delineate metropolitan areas have been developed. Systematic comparisons of these approaches in terms of the urban landscape that they generate are however few. This paper aims to fill this gap. The paper focuses on Indonesia and makes use of the availability of data...

There is a large and extensive literature examining the strength of agglomeration economies and, more generally, the determinants of spatial variations in productivity for developed countries. However, the corresponding literature for developing countries is comparatively scant. This paper...

Transport corridors can generate wider economic benefits and costs through their effects on a potentially diverse set of development outcomes, such as economic growth, poverty, jobs, equity, environmental quality, and economic resilience. To advance understanding of how corridors could generate...

Using firm-level data covering 709 cities in 128 countries, this paper examines the role of a comprehensive list of business environment variables at the subnational level in explaining firm employment and productivity growth. The analysis finds basic protection, access to finance and...

Two long-established stylized facts in the urban and development economics literatures are that: (a) a country's level of economic development is strongly positively correlated with its level of urbanization; and (b) a country's level of urbanization is strongly negatively correlated with the...

Despite its rapid growth in recent decades, GDP per capita in India remains at a relatively low level by international standards, and the country continues to be marked by large subnational disparities in levels of well-being. These large disparities naturally lead to interest in India’s...

China has used two main spatial policies to shape its geographic patterns of development: restricted labor mobility through the Hukou residential registration system and massive infrastructure investment, notably a 96,000 kilometer national expressway network. This paper develops a structural...

This paper investigates empirically firm investment behavior in research and development (R&D). Firms make investments in R&D in order to produce innovations. These innovations in turn improve the firm's future productivity level, pro tability and incentives to invest in R&D. Using German...