After having pointed out the diverse uses of the term infrastructure in the literature on the market-economy, the different categories of infrastructure will be described. The argument in this context is that the classification of infrastructure suggested by Jochimsen has proved useful:...

It has become increasingly common to allocate highway franchises to the bidder that offers to charge the lowest toll. Often, building a highway increases the value of land held by a small group of developers, an effect that is more pronounced with lower tolls. We study the welfare implications...

We examine the relationship between local public goods, prices, wages, and population in an equilibrium inter-city model. Non-traded production, federal taxes, and imperfect mobility all affect how public goods (or "amenities" more broadly) should be valued from data. Reinterpreting the...

Noise pollution is detrimental to health and to cognitive development of children. This is not only true for extreme levels of noise in the neighborhood of an airport but also to traffic noise in urban areas. Using a census of preschool children, we show that children who are exposed to...

The paper studies the relationship between inequality and economic growth. This is done in a two sector model of endogenous growth with agents characterized by heterogeneity of factor endowments. The private sector consists of a large number of competitive firms who produce the only final good...

We study the strategic incentives of regional governments to allocate their budget to public investment and to public consumption expenditures against the background of an incentive-compatible redistribution policy set by the central government. Regional investment changes the productivity...

Local and regional policy makers are acquiring an increasingly active role in affecting firms' specialization decisions that in turn influence firms' vertical organization. We analyse the relation between vertical integration incentives and trade liberalization in the presence of glocal...

Consumers should pay directly for many services furnished by the public sector, particularly such congestible services as roads or water and sewerage provided to easily identifiable users. However, these goods are often funded or partly subsidized through general taxes. Politicians seldom opt...

We study the effects of granting an exit option that enables the private party to early terminate a PPP project if it turns out to be loss-making. In a continuous time setting with hidden information about stochastic operating profits, we show that a revenue-maximizing government can optimally...

The direct impact of local public goods on welfare is relatively easy to measure from land rents. However, the indirect effects on home and job location, on land use, and on agglomeration benefits are hard to pin down. We develop a spatial general equilibrium model for the valuation of these...