We construct the first estimates of U.S. county nominal and real GDP by broadly defined industrial sectors from 1870 to 2018. Counties tended to converge from 1870 until 1970, but subsequently grew apart. Falling inequality between states explains most of the fall in county inequality from 1870...

This paper decomposes the causal effect of government defense spending into: (i) a local (or direct) effect, and (ii) a spillover (or indirect) effect. Using state-level defense spending data, we show that a negative cross-state spillover effect explains the existing simultaneous findings of a...

There has been an international trend towards shifting the provision of public services down to lower levels of government. That decentralization has increased the relative importance of local governments. This paper examines the relationship between spending by those local governments and...

China's government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in new industrial parks with the intent of boosting the productivity of new firms attracted to the parks and to generate spillovers for the local economy in order to accelerate economic growth. Do such place based investments...

The Asian Development bank (ADB)'s new report on a region-based urban development strategy for Nepal should be required reading for the Constituent Assembly members, the political parties, and all others concerned with enhancing Nepal's economic and social development