Nighttime lights observed from satellites are a widely accepted proxy measure for economic development. This is mainly based on cross-country evidence that finds strong correlations between lights and Gross Domestic Product. Yet, the evidence on the correlations at local levels is scarce, and it...

​This research investigates the determinants of corruption in China using micro-level data. We use survey data on 6,000 households from 28 provinces to estimate logit models that show how corruption perceptions and attitudes to corruption are shaped by individual and provincial determinants....

The advantages and disadvantages of public sector decentralization are widely discussedin economics and political science. While some authors argue that decentralization leads to an optimal provision of public services and a promotion of economic growth, others emphasize the dangers of...

We study how natural-resource rents a ffect the risk of internal conflict within countries and how the federal structure of countries influences this relationship. Natural-resource abundance may induce excessive rent-seeking and thus increase the risk of internal conflict. Fiscal and political...

This paper studies the influence of interregional inequality within countries on internal conflicts. Regional inequalities are measured by the population-weighted coefficient of variation of regional GDP per capita. As the main innovation, I use a panel data set of country-level regional...

We study the effect of international trade and freeness of trade on interregional inequality within countries. We estimate a model derived from a structural economic geography approach where interregional inequality depends on weighted trade shares and trade costs and where we can derive an...

We analyze the impact of earthquakes on nighttime lights at a sub-national level, i.e. on grids of different size. We argue that existing studies on the impact of natural disasters on economic development have several important limitations, both at the level of the outcome variable – usually...

We study the effect of spatial inequality on economic activity. Given that the relationship is highly simultaneous in nature, we use exogenous variation in geographic features to construct an instrument for spatial inequality, which is independent from any man-made factors. Inequality measures...

Christian Leßmann und Arne Steinkraus, Technische Universität Braunschweig, zeigen, dass die Technologie des CCS durch das gezielte Abscheiden von Kohlendioxid aus Kraftwerksabgasen und die anschließende unterirdische Speicherung desselben, trotz hoher Kosten, dazu beitragen kann, die...

Antje-Mareike Dietrich, Christian Leßmann und Arne Steinkraus, Technische Universität Braunschweig, kommen bei ihrer Beurteilung der Subvention für Elektroautos zu dem Ergebnis, dass die Einführung der Kaufprämie kein geeignetes Mittel ist, um die Klimabilanz des Verkehrssektors im Sinne...