Cap and trade remains attractive to many state governments because it provides a much-needed source of additional revenue when greenhouse gas emission allowances are auctioned to the highest bidder. We analyze the income distribution impacts of the California Global Warming Solutions Act under alternative policy designs. These include the free allocation of emission allowances versus recycling ...

An important characteristic of the economic development in Europe and North America during the last few decades is a fast expansion of the business-service sector. The present paper aims at modeling the location dynamics of three categories of firms: (i) knowledge-intensive business-service firms, (ii) ordinary business-service firms and other firms, where the latter form the rest of the econom...

This review essay debates the policy issues raised by the book Retooling for Growth: Building a 21 Century Economy in America’s Older Industrial Areas, edited by Richard M. McGahey and Jennifer S. Vey (Brookings Institution Press, 2008). I argue that the main rationale for adopting policies to revitalize older industrial cities is to improve the per capita earnings of urban residents. Therefore...

This paper examines the spatial distribution of jobs across U.S. counties between 1970 and 2000, and investigates whether sectoral employment is becoming more or less concentrated. The existing literature has found deconcentration (convergence) of employment across urban areas. Cities only cover a small part of the U.S. though. Using county data, our results indicate that deconcentration is lim...

This paper investigates the evolution of expenditure inequality in Indonesia during 1999-2008, a period that coincides greatly with the implementation of fiscal decentralisation policy. In general, the results show increasing expenditure inequality evident in a decreasing share of income in the bottom 10 percent, and an increasing share in the top 10 percent. Further examination employing the t...