In order to better understand the association between broadband and jobs/income in non-metropolitan counties, this study conducts spatial and firstdifferenced regressions using recent data from the Federal Communications Commission and the National Broadband Map. The relationships between broadband adoption/availability and jobs/income in rural areas are analyzed after controlling for a host of...

This paper evaluates the effect of High Speed Rail (HSR) projects on the economic growth of targeted city nodes (HSR cities) in China using prefectural-level city data from 1990 to 2013. Employing a panel data program evaluation method devised by Hsiao, Chin and Wan (2012), we construct hypothetical counterfactuals for per capita real GDP of HSR cities in the absence of their respective HSR pro...

We use a new method to estimate China’s income distributions using publicly available interval summary statistics from China’s largest national household survey. We examine rural, urban, and overall income distributions for each year from 1985-2001. By estimating the entire distributions, we can show how the distributions change directly as well as examine trends in traditional welfare indices ...

Sales price indices for the Chicago multifamily real estate market are developed in order to examine the influence that designating an area a tax increment financing district (TIF) has on the real property appreciation rates. Chicago is a community with a long history of TIF investment and a patchwork of more than 130 established TIF districts, comprising over 29 percent of the city’s total acr...

Paul Winters and Susana Sitja Rubio The purpose of this guideline is to discuss the objectives and approaches of regional (subnational) development programs in order to provide guidance on issues related to evaluating the impact of these programs. Regional development programs are designed to improve the income-generating capacity of, and reduce poverty in, a focus region within a country. The ...

The literature on industrial districts (also referred to as business clusters) has grown out of recognition that spatial proximity among firms supports the formation and exchange of knowledge within an industry and is therefore a source of competitive advantage. While such a ‘territorial’ perspective on interfirm relationships is valuable in highlighting the informal means through which firms c...

This paper studies the impact of the local industrial structure on employment dynamics in Germany. Local employment growth is decomposed into internal growth resulting from employment changes in existing plants and external growth, which is determined by employment decisions of newly established plants. The dynamics of both components are estimated simultaneously, taking explicitly into account...

Development economists have considered physical infrastructure to be a precondition for industrialization and economic development. Yet, two issues remain to be addressed in the literature. First, while proper identification of the causal effectiveness of infrastructure in reducing poverty is important, experimental evaluation, such as randomized control trials (RCT)-based evaluation, is diffic...

This paper exploits an unusual transportation setting to generate some of the first revealed preference value of a statistical life (VSL) estimates from a low-income setting. We estimate the trade-offs individuals are willing to make between mortality risk and cost as they travel to and from the international airport in Sierra Leone (which is separated from the capital Freetown by a body of wat...

This paper assesses the impact of Siam’s 1901 Land Title Deed Act on land markets and land use in Bangkok. Using a sample of orchard title deeds issued in the 1880s, this study investigates the incidence of land transfers and subsequent land use patterns both before and after the transition from usufruct to full private ownership rights as a result of the 1901 Act. Survival analysis shows that ...