Using census-type data of Hungarian firms, we test the Marshall-Arrow-Romer (MAR) hypothesis on the impact of agglomeration economies on regional economic growth. The results suggest that MAR type of local knowledge externalities have a significant positive impact on TFP growth. However, initial...

Recent literatures on entrepreneurship and economic growth estimate the empirical relationships between the following pairs of variables: (1) institutions and entrepreneurial activity; (2) institutions and economic growth; and (3) entrepreneurship and economic growth.This paper revisits each of...

Developing countries have seen a rapid rise in population urbanization in the past decades. At the same time, they have participated actively in the process of globalization. However, possible interlinks between population urbanization and trade openness in developing economies have been ignored...

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...

In the present Master Thesis, written at the University of Bonn, the relationship between fiscal decentralization and regional economic growth is studied for the case of the Russian Federation. A rich panel dataset of 78 Russian regions during 2005-2012 is gathered by the author. Using panel...

This article empirically assesses the validity of alternative growth models at regional level. This is done by comparing the stochastic properties of physical capital investment and growth using a panel unit root test statistic that is robust to cross-sectional dependence of a spatial nature....

We use U.S. county-level data to estimate convergence rates for 22 individual states. We find significant heterogeneity. E.g., the California estimate is 19.9 percent and the New York estimate is 3.3 percent. Convergence rates are essentially uncorrelated with income levels

We discuss regional disparities in economic performance and living standards. We first set out some key facts, and provide a conceptual framework to help analyze whether such disparities are efficient, or instead reflect market and/or policy failures. We examine whether policy attempts to reduce...

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...

This paper contributes to the literature that uses the Economic Freedom of North America (EFNA) index to evaluate relationships with various outcomes. Most of the literature estimates a linear relationship between economic freedom and those outcomes. However, using matching methods can be a...