We exploit a series of discontinuities, at several population thresholds, in the allocation mechanism of federal transfers to municipal governments in Brazil to identify the causal effect of municipal spending on local labor markets, using a 'fuzzy' regression discontinuity design. Our estimates...

In this chapter we analyze immigration and its effect on urban and regional economies focusing on productivity and labor markets. While immigration policies are typically national, the effects of international migrants are often more easily identified on local economies. The reason is that their...

We investigate the role of deeply-rooted pre-colonial ethnic institutions in shaping comparative regional development within African countries. We combine information on the spatial distribution of ethnicities before colonization with regional variation in contemporary economic performance, as...

Many studies of regional disparity in China have focused on the preferential policies received by the coastal provinces. We decomposed the location dummies in provincial growth regressions to obtain estimates of the effects of geography and policy on provincial growth rates in 1996-99. Their...

This paper estimates the Rybczynski equation matrix for the twenty two-digit U.S." manufacturing industries for various years between 1880 and 1987. As predicted by the standard" general equilibrium theory of interregional trade, the regression estimates show that a consistent" set of factor...

We present a simple model of a two-region economy in which undesirable concentration may occur. With freedom to choose where to live, individuals in this economy concentrate into one region in their pursuit of better life, and end up becoming worse off. We characterize the conditions under which...

Over the last two decades, the literature on comparative development has moved from country-level to within-country analyses. The questions asked have expanded, as economists have used satellite images of light density at night and other big spatial data to proxy for development at the desired...

The provision of long-term care (LTC) for senior citizens in Italy is at the center of the recent policy debate. Italy has witnessed a spectacular increase in the share of people aged 65 and over and in particular of people aged 80 and over, which could translate in large increases in the number...

Analyzing data spanning three decades covering the near universe of births, we study county-level differences in Cesarean section (C-section) rates among first-time mothers of singleton births. Our research reveals persistent geographic variation in C- section rates for both low- and high-risk...

Decisions to invest in human capital depend on people's time preferences. We show that differences in patience are closely related to substantial subnational differences in educational achievement, leading to new perspectives on longstanding within-country disparities. We use social-media data -...