The development of Asian cities is characterised by rapid and continuous urbanisation on an unprecedented scale, with rapid economic growth led in most places by the manufacturing industry, and rapidly increasing motorisation. The result has been escalating greenhouse gas emissions, sprawling...

The purpose of this paper is to understand how income inequality is associated with economic growth in OECD regions and whether the degree and type of urban concentration affects this relationship. Both income inequality and urban concentration can be seen as patterns of resource allocation that...

Land degradation cripples smallholder crop production in Sub-Saharan Africa, including those found in the densely populated, grain basket areas of Kenya. Research in the early nineties already documented and rated nutrient depletion to be very high in the east African Highlands. Whereas some of...

This paper provides the first direct evidence on the determinants of link formation among immigrants in the host society. We use a purposely-designed survey on a representative sample of Sri Lankan immigrants living in Milan to study how migrants form social links among them and the extent to...

This paper explores the role of information transmission and misaligned interests across levels of government in explaining variation in the degree of decentralization across countries. Within a two-sided incomplete information principal-agent framework, it analyzes two alternative...

This paper explores the role of information transmission in explaining donors\' choice between project aid and budget support. Budget support increases the involvement of recipient governments in the decision-making process and can thus be an example of a “delegation-scheme\". Conversely,...

e investigate the role of constituents’ preferences in shaping the voting behavior of elected representatives on immigration and trade policy. Using a novel dataset spanning the period 1986-2004, in which we match individual opinion surveys with congressmen roll call votes, we find that...

This paper analyzes the impact of different governance structures on the degree of Bank-Fund cooperation, focusing on the quality of their information transmission. It compares the performance of a decentralized governance with that of a centralized one. A centralized structure better addresses...

Employment protection may affect both productivity and capital investment because higher adjustments costs hamper allocative efficiency and may therefore affect both the optimal capital labor input mix and total factor productivity. To estimate the impact of dismissal costs on capital deepening...

Despite its enormous potential, Myanmar’s agriculture has underperformed over the past fifty years. Today, per capita earnings in agriculture average roughly $200 a year, one-half to one-third of the levels achieved by its regional peers. Given that two-thirds of the population works primarily...