Building on central place theory, we offer a series of simple location models for US credit unions. Credit unions are historically viewed as a community-based strategy designed to fill voids in spatial financial markets. Unlike banks and more traditional retail financial institutions, our...

We use a survey of small rural enterprises from Tanzania to demonstrate quantitatively the economic importance of this sector and to identify participants' characteristics and obstacles to the sector's expansion and productivity. In stark contrast to most of the findings for the formal sector...

In this paper I analyze mobility in rural credit markets. A panel data set of rural Honduran households is used to study credit market transitions; specifically, the dynamic evolution of formal and informal sector participation. Mobility patterns among four different credit market states are...

Using data from approximately 1,000 small and mostly rural municipalities from Illinois, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, the authors study choices in production arrangements over a wide range of services, and examine a variety of contracting options available to local governments. The data reveal...

In this note we use a variable parameter model to test for asymmetries in the treatment of intergovernmental aid. The central question is whether local government officials treat intergovernmental aid differently during periods of aid certainty and uncertainty. We find evidence of fiscal...

The impact of state tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) on bond credit ratings is estimated using an incomplete (or unbalanced) panel from the US states from 1973 to 2005. Three indices of the restrictiveness of TELs are used. Both Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s bond credit...

Blanchflower and Oswald argue that the wage curve is a predictable empirical relationship with the “unemployment elasticity of pay” of about −0.1. Using GWR I find evidence of significant spatial heterogeneity in the unemployment elasticity of pay for US counties.