We study how the presence of a college affects the local economy using administrative data. Our analysis exploits the opening of new institutions of tertiary education across Germany in the 1980s and 1990s. The new college substantially increased the student population and share of high-skilled...

Local Action Groups (LAGs), which is a promising development approach underpinning the participation of all local actors (community-led rural development) as the main pre-condition for generating and sustaining economic development in rural regions, has gained prominence across the world....

The situation, development lines and perspectives of small and medium-sized towns in Germany and France are compared and similarities and differences within the central place systems and the spatial planning of both countries are discussed. With different approaches to definition, these towns...

The article studies the phenomenon of Taobao villages in China and its effect on sustainable development in rural area. A Taobao village is a locality (mostly a village) where more than 10% of households run an online shop, and rural e-commerce generates more than 10 million RMB per annum. The...

In this paper, we develop a new index labelled the African Women Vulnerability Index (AWVI) with a focus on rural women using Round 7 of the Afrobarometer Survey. The AWVI comprises 59 indicators in six dimensions namely: safety, empowerment, health, education, economic prosperity and...