This paper documents a significant impact of climate variation on urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily in arid countries. By lowering farm incomes, reduced moisture availability encourages migration to nearby cities, while wetter conditions slow it. The paper also provides evidence for ruralurban linkages. In countries where cities are starting to develop an industrial base, reduced mo...

The paper seeks to develop our understanding of the somewhat diffuse nature of technological externalities in technological space by associating a geographical dimension with the sectoral dimension. Using panel data this paper estimates a knowledge production function that allows for spillovers inside the same industry and outside, and for local as well as global geographical spillovers. This a...

The drivers of educational attainment have been the subject of much research both in the developed and the developing world. Yet, nothing is known about the effect of birth registration on schooling outcomes. Birth registration is not only a fundamental human right but also a requirement to obtain additional documents of legal identity and access many government benefits. Using data for the Dom...

This paper looks at the impact of high technology employment concentrations on urban sprawl. A methodology for translating spatial employment patterns, into place of residence patterns, is presented. On this basis, the consumption of land at the urban fringe due to both residential and nonresidential uses, is estimated. The method is tested empirically using data relating to the two main outer ...

Transportation costs are of central importance in the New Economic Geography literature, though assumptions about transportation costs continue to be simplistic. This paper begins to address these simplifications by assuming that transportation costs for manufactured goods are heterogeneous. Basic results are consistent with standard models showing dispersion of economic activity for high trans...

In the context of China without a median voter system, this study examines whether the “flypaper effect”, an unconditional lump-sum grant from the upper governments to the county governments increases spending in a greater proportion than an equivalent rise in local income, holds true in China. Using China’s county-level education data during 2007, the models have been estimated using a spatial...

This research makes use of a large sample of individual telephone calls between local exchanges (cities, towns, villages) within a U.S. region. The interlocational flows, measured in conversation seconds, are analyzed by estimating, in a simultaneous equation framework, spatial interaction models that account for (1) the role of the spatial structure, which reflects the competition and agglomer...

This paper sets up a two country monopolistic competition model with intra-industry trade to study the effects of an exogenous differential in wage and social policies on the location of industry. Two model scenarios are considered. In the traditional one with physical capital, such a differential induces a relocation effect which increases with the level of trade integration. The ‘new economic...

A large body of research has established a positive connection between an industry’s productivity and the magnitude of its presence within locally defined geographic areas. This paper examines the extent to which this relationship can be explained by a micro-level underpinning commonly associated with productivity: establishment scale. Looking at data on two-digit manufacturing across a sample ...

Cross sections for the rotational (de)excitation of CO by ground state para-and ortho-H 2 are obtained using quantum scattering calculations for collision energies between 1 and 520 cm −1. A new CO−H 2 potential energy surface is employed and its quality is assessed by comparison with explicitly correlated CCSD(T)-R12 calculations. Rate constants for rotational levels of CO up to 5 and temperat...