This paper analyses the relationship between household cost of living and wages in the Brazilian metropolitan regions. The country's economic growth in the last decade contributed significantly to structural economic changes at the regional level, in terms of employment, population growth and...

Over the past several decades, significant efforts have been made to regulate the use of resource and pollution in most industrialized countries, and the stringency of pollution regulations has continued to increase globally. At the same time, physical and social infrastructures are influenced...

This research examines the economic origins of Islam and uncovers two empirical regularities. First, Muslim countries, virtual countries and ethnic groups, exhibit highly unequal regional agricultural endowments. Second, Muslim adherence is systematically larger along the pre-Islamic trade...

This study explores the interaction between trade and geography in shaping the Islamic economic doctrine and in turn the comparative development of the Muslim world. We build a model where an unequal distribution of land quality in presence of trade opportunities conferred differential gains...

In this article, we investigate the relevance of structural change in country-wide productivity growth considering within-country differences. For this purpose, we propose a two-step decomposition approach that accounts for differences among subnational units. To highlight the relevance of our...

The commonly-used satellite images of nighttime lights fail to capture the true brightness of most cities. We show that night lights are a reliable proxy for economic activity at the city level, provided they are first corrected for top-coding. We present a stylized model of urban luminosity and...

Ein Teil des heute noch vorhandenen ökonomischen Rückstandes von Ostdeutschland im Vergleich zu Westdeutschland kan direkt auf die Nachkriegswirren des 2. Weltkrieges zurückgeführt werden. Die Ankunft der Roten Armee in Zentral- und Osteuropa führte sowohl zu großen Fluchtbewegungen als...

This paper empirically tests the hypothesis that landed elites may block technological change and economic development if they fear that they will lose future political power (Acemoglu and Robinson (2002, 2006, and 2012). It exploits a plausible exogenous change in the distribution of political...

New knowledge in the form of products, processes and organizations leads to opportunities that can be exploited commercially. However, converting new ideas into economic growth requires turning new knowledge into economic knowledge that constitutes a commercial opportunity. Acs, Audretsch,...

This research examines the economic origins of Islam and uncovers two empirical regularities. First, Muslim countries, virtual countries and ethnic groups, exhibit highly unequal regional agricultural endowments. Second, Muslim adherence is systematically larger along the pre-Islamic trade...