This paper estimates the impact of BMI, obesity and overweight on direct medical costs. We apply panel data econometrics and use a two-part model with a longitudinal dataset of medical and administrative records of patients in primary and secondary healthcare centres in Spain followed up over...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of revenue decentralization on the provision of infrastructure at the sub-national level. We estimate the effects of revenue decentralization and earmarked grant financing on the level of sub-national infrastructure investment in 20 European...

Using survey information about characteristics of personal contacts linked with administrative register information on employment status one year later, I show that unemployed survey respondents with many employed acquaintances have a higher job finding rate. Settlement in a socially deprived...

In line with the literature that considers that transaction costs, asset specificity and incomplete contracts play a key role in the “make or buy decision”, this paper seeks to discriminate the characteristics of firms that make them more or less likely to integrate their activities in a...

The relationship between socio-economic status and student achievement is well documented and a widespread literature indicates that students from more advantaged backgrounds perform better at school. Despite this relationship, several international assessments have highlighted that in each...

US post-war suburbanization has reshaped the spatial pattern of growth in many metropolitan areas, with population and employment shift toward the suburbs resulting in the urban decay of central cities. This being the case, the adoption of adequate anti-sprawl policies should lead to a reduction...

Cities are more than centers of production. This paper introduces new spatial variables in order to gain new insights into the role cities play as centers of leisure, consumption and beauty. First, a revealed preference indicator of urbanity is constructed based on geo-tagged photos shared in...

We provide empirical evidence of the dynamics of city size distribution for the whole of the twentieth century in U.S. cities and metropolitan areas. We focus our analysis on the new cities that were created during the period of analysis. The main contribution of this paper, therefore, is the...

We examine whether state-level incumbents discriminate in the allocation of transfers in favour of local governments controlled by co-partisans, and whether the electoral prospects of local incumbents improve when they are aligned with the state incumbent. Using a new database covering around...

Recent proposals would strengthen the dependence of teacher pay and retention on performance, in order to attract those who will be effective teachers and repel those who will not. I model the teacher labor market, incorporating dynamic self-selection, noisy performance measurement, and Bayesian...