Regional disparities in output per capita and income in China are large and persistent. They have been the subject of considerable concern to policy-makers at the highest level for decades, yet little is known about the effectiveness of various alternative policies which may be used to combat them. In this paper we address this issue by analysing the effectiveness of a range of policies by both...

BACKGROUND This study investigates the perception of the general public regarding the concentration to metropolitan, hospitals of cardiac and cerebrovascular surgeries, and the perceived public need for government policies to resolve this issue. METHODS A total of 800 participants were recruited for our telephone interview survey. Quota sampling was performed, adjusting for age and sex, to se...

Exploiting Regional Treatment Intensity for the Evaluation of Labour Market Policies We estimate the effects of active labour market policies (ALMP) on subsequent employment by nonparametric instrumental variables and matching estimators. Very informative administrative Swiss data with detailed regional information are combined with exogenous regional variation in programme participation probab...

The regional policy level is often seen as a (potential) source of progressive policy-making in health (and in social policy more widely), complementing or substituting national policy levels, which are perceived as underperforming. While it can certainly be argued that there are important opportunities to adopt regional approaches to tackle border-crossing health issues, this article draws the...

Regional economic integration has a fairly long history in virtually all parts of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). A number of leaders called for the integration of Africa already soon after independence, but it was only in the 1970s and 1980s that concrete steps were taken to re-launch or establish economic integration institutions in all sub-regions. The first generation regional integration schemes...

Regional inequalities represent an ever present development challenge in most countries especially those with large geographic areas under their jurisdictions. Globalization heightens these challenges as it places a premium on skills. With globalization skills rather than the resource base of regions determine their competitiveness. Skilled workers gain at the expense of unskilled ones. As typi...

Regions within the European Union differ substantially not only with respect to per capita GDP, but also with respect to income inequality within the regions. This paper studies the effects of different types of technology-oriented cohesion policies, aiming at the reduction of regional differences, on the convergence of regions and the dynamics of income inequality within regions. In particular...

Regions within the European Union differ substantially not only with respect to per capita GDP, but also with respect to income inequality within the regions. This paper studies the effects of different types of technology-oriented cohesion policies, aiming at the reduction of regional differences, on the convergence of regions and the dynamics of income inequality within regions. In particular...

A standard result in the literature on environmental economics is that efficient environmental policies regulating transboundary pollution will be adopted only if there is interjurisdictional coordination. Efficient policies can be adopted as a result of interregional treaties or mandated by a central authority. The present paper demonstrates that if there is perfect population mobility between...