Do local improvements in infrastructure provision improve city competitiveness? What public finance mechanisms stimulate local infrastructure supply? And how do local efforts compare with national decisions of placing inter-regional trunk infrastructure? In this paper, we examine how the...

Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing rapid population growth. Yet their economic growth has not kept pace. Why? One factor might be low capital investment, due in part to Africa's relative poverty: Other regions have reached similar stages of urbanization at higher per capita GDP. This...

Air pollution from vehicular traffic is a major source of health damage in urban areas. The problems of urban traffic and pollution are essentially geographic, because their incidence and impacts depend on the spatial distribution of economic activities, households, and transport links. This...

In this paper, we examine the determinants of Brazilian city growth between 1970 and 2000. We consider a model of a city, which combines aspects of standard urban economics and the new economic geography literatures. For the empirical analysis, we constructed a dataset of 123 Brazilian...

The share of urban population in Brazil has increased from 58 to 80 percent between 1970 and 2000 and all net population growth over the next thirty years is predicted to be in cities. This paper explores population growth and its implications for economic dynamics and income generation among...