Congestion plays a central role in urban and transportation economics. Existing estimates of congestion costs rely on stated or revealed preferences studies. We explore a complementary measure of congestion costs based on self-reported happiness. Exploiting quasi-random variation in daily...

The world is changing very quickly in the twenty-first century. Curiously, as we enter a new period of global connections—and also of de-coupling—many are looking to the past for ideas, inspiration and models that can help explain and contextualise the present and the future. Perhaps the...

The debates on China’s Belt and Road Initiative often detour around the crucial question of whether China will actually be able to translate all its plans into reality. Their success is usually assumed, with quite a few influential figures believing that as an authoritarian system, the Chinese...

This chapter reviews the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the greater Eurasian context by integrating economic, political and cultural aspects. This includes in particular strategic issues and core motives of China's leadership as well as aspects of critique from a European view. Europe's...

The New Silk Road or Belt and Road Initiative corresponds to an enormous international infrastructure investment program launched and largely financed by the People's Republic of China and providing for the construction/modernization of port, road, railroad, pipeline, energy and communications...

The Chinese “Belt and Road Initiative” has become an unprecedented challenge in different aspects: political, economic, humanitarian. The idea of the “belt of development” seems very attractive and gives hope for inclusive development in Eurasia. However, it has not yet provided answers...

This paper estimates the effect of access to transportation networks on regional economic outcomes in China over a twenty-period of rapid income growth. It addresses the problem of the endogenous placement of networks by exploiting the fact that these networks tend to connect historical cities....