This paper attempts to model directly the "folk theorem" of spatial economics, according to which increasing returns to scale are essential for understanding the geographical distributions of activity. The model uses the simple structure of most New Economic Geography papers, with two identical...

Using a generalized version of the Venables (International Economic Review, 37: 341-359) model, this article explores the relative locations of two vertically linked sectors with knowledge spillovers. Analytical investigation shows that the dynamic properties of the Venables model are...

Knowledge spillovers have recently been analysed by Barde (2009) and Ostbye (2010) in a spatial general equilibrium framework. Both studies lack explicit micro foundations for the spillovers - spillovers just take place and depend on firm density. The models must therefore be seen as reduced...

We investigate the long-term impact of early exposure to Berlusconi’s commercial TV network, Mediaset, on voting behavior and civic engagement in Italy. To do so, we exploit differences in Mediaset signal reception across Italian municipalities due to the network’s staggered introduction...

We investigate the relationship between inter-jurisdictional cooperation and law enforcement in Mexico. Exploiting a Regression Discontinuity Design in close municipal elections, we study how improved opportunities for cooperation in crime prevention among neighboring municipalities - proxied by...

This paper investigates the relative importance of fairness preferences, risk aversion, and selfinterest in determining support for redistribution. We present evidence from a series of laboratory experiments in which a large number of subjects choose the level of redistributive taxation to be...