|
on Urban Economics and Policy |
| By: | Adrian Fernandez-Perez (Department of Banking and Finance, Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, University College of Dublin, Ireland.); Marta Gómez-Puig (Department of Economics and Riskcenter, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.); Simón Sosvilla-Rivero (Complutense Institute for Economic Analysis, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.) |
| Abstract: | This study examines the impact of extreme temperatures on housing price dynamics in Spain, considering both direct and indirect effects across geographic space. Using panel data at the provincial level and a spatial econometric model, we find that an increase in the number of days with maximum temperatures exceeding 35 °C (95ºF) over the past year is significantly associated with a decline in both sale and rental prices within the affected province. However, we also identify a positive indirect effect on housing markets in more distant provinces, particularly in the rental sector, consistent with a pattern of temperature-induced house price premium in cooler regions. A central methodological contribution of this paper is the use of spatial econometric techniques to detect and quantify these spillover effects. By explicitly modelling spatial dependence, we can disentangle local impacts from broader geographic transmission mechanisms, revealing how climate stressors reshape housing demand across regions. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating climate-related factors into real estate market analysis and the design of adaptation policies. |
| Keywords: | Extreme Heat Temperature; Housing Prices; Spatial Econometrics; Environmental Economics. JEL classification: C23; Q54; R14; R21; R31. |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ira:wpaper:202516 |
| By: | Kemeny, Thomas; Connor, Dylan Shane; Suss, Joel; Xie, Siqiao; Jang, Jiwon; Gu, Zhining |
| Abstract: | Despite extensive research on spatial inequality, the geography of wealth remains understudied. We develop a theoretical framework explaining why wealth’s spatial distribution differs from income’s and how local advantages create self-reinforcing dynamics. Using novel data tracking household net worth across 722 U.S. commuting zones from 1960-2020, we establish five stylized facts. Wealth is 60-70% more spatially concentrated than income, with patterns distinct from income and housing values. Post-1980 increases in between-place inequality reflect places changing positions rather than divergence. Within places, bottom 50% wealth shares declined nationwide. These patterns reveal feedback mechanisms compounding spatial advantages, highlighting welfare disparities exceeding income-focused research. |
| JEL: | N30 D31 E21 R10 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:137667 |
| By: | Zhiguo He; Zehao Liu; Xinle Pang; Yang Su; Kunru Zou |
| Abstract: | Collateral constraints limit household migration to expensive locations by restricting financing for home purchases. Such endogenous location choice amplifies the impact of relaxing household borrowing constraints. Using China’s cash-based shantytown renovation program (2015-2018) as a natural experiment, we provide evidence that cash resettlement—by converting illiquid shanty houses into cash—facilitated household location upgrading and raised house prices in more expensive locations. A dynamic spatial model with collateral constraints confirms household migration responses to the cash transfer. Quantitatively, endogenous migration amplifies household housing expenditure responses by around 40%, and is able to explain more than 20% of the housing price growth in 2016-2020. |
| JEL: | D15 D50 G0 R0 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34982 |
| By: | He; Z.;; Huynh, L.D.T.; |
| Abstract: | This paper leverages China's 2006 housing reform and a non-parametric Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) to identify the causal impact of housing wealth on health and healthcare spending across age groups. We document a rich series of findings. A positive housing wealth shock leads to an increase in out -of-pocket medical expenses of the elderly and children, at both the extensive and intensive margins, thereby improving their health. These effects differ across age cohorts, highlighting how positive wealth shocks are translated into health improvements through both direct spending and private insurance uptake. In contrast, these health effects are not evident among young adults. Overall, these results indicate that wealth shock reduces health inequality within vulnerable households. The underlying mechanisms also differ by age group:a pure wealth effect for the elderly, precautionary savings incentives for younger adults, and inter-generational investments for children. |
| Keywords: | housing wealth; medical expenditure; health; China; age differences; |
| JEL: | G51 I11 I14 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:26/04 |
| By: | Barbour, Elisa PhD; Gordon-Feierabend, Lev; Kaeppelin, Francois |
| Abstract: | Transit-oriented development (TOD) is a strategy that promotes building housing, shops, offices, and other destinations near public transit stations. TOD is compact and walkable, supports public transit use, reduces car dependency, and can help lower greenhouse gas emissions by decreasing the number of miles people drive. California has adopted many policies in recent years– at the state, regional, and local levels– to encourage TOD as part of its broader climate and housing goals. At the same time, the state faces a housing affordability crisis. In the past seven years, state lawmakers have passed more than 100 bills aimed at increasing housing production, particularly in areas near public transit. |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| Date: | 2026–03–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt0qb0k3hr |
| By: | Pol Cosentino |
| Abstract: | Cities are places where people commute to work and where goods are traded across space. While a large literature examines how lower commuting costs reshape cities, much less is known about within-city trade costs as a distinct force. This paper studies both channels using the construction of the Petite Ceinture railroad in nineteenth-century Paris, the world's first circular transit system, designed for both freight and passengers. Using newly digitized data on firms, population, rents, and transport networks spanning 1801 to 1906, I provide causal evidence that improved access to the railroad reshaped the spatial distribution of economic activities during this period. To quantify general equilibrium effects, I develop and calibrate a quantitative urban model in which within-city freight costs generate spatial variation in tradable goods prices, creating consumption-driven forces at the residence absent from canonical models. Counterfactuals show that removing the railroad would substantially reduce total population, consumption of tradables, and spatial specialization. Ignoring within-city freight costs leads to a 17.1% underestimation of the effects of transport infrastructure on urban structure and welfare. |
| Keywords: | commuting, trade, transport infrastructure, quantitative urban model |
| JEL: | R40 R12 R13 F12 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12557 |
| By: | Abhishek Seth (Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee); Manish K. Singh (Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee); Diya Uday (xKDR Forum) |
| Abstract: | Property taxes (PTs) are the primary own-source revenue for Indian urban local bodies (ULBs), yet actual collections fall short of potential, constraining service delivery. Existing studies have documented this gap but have been limited to state or district-level analysis due to the absence of reliable municipal data. This paper exploits new geospatial datasets-ULB boundary maps, nighttime lights, and building volume to estimate PT demand at the ULB level in Karnataka. Using cross-sectional data for 268 ULBs in 2019-20, we show that the sum of building volume (SoBV) within a ULB boundary alone can explain over 80% of the variation in PT demand across ULBs, with a 1% increase in SoBV predicting a 1.09% rise in demand. Benchmarking exercises reveal stark regional disparities aligned with historical administrative boundaries. These findings demonstrate how non-government spatial data can measure fiscal capacity, verify self-reported statistics, and highlight institutional legacies that shape urban tax performance. |
| JEL: | H71 H72 R51 C21 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anf:wpaper:47 |
| By: | Antonio Di Paolo (Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether acquiring proficiency in a local language improves neighbourhood quality in a bilingual region, focusing on Catalonia, Spain. The analysis uses rich microdata linked to census-tract measures of neighbourhood quality, including average local income, unemployment benefits per capita, and a composite socioeconomic status index. OLS results show that oral proficiency in Catalan among native Spanish speakers is associated with better residential outcomes. To address potential endogeneity of language skills, I exploit the implementation of a language-ineducation policy that introduced Catalan as a medium of instruction, promoting Catalan-Spanish bilingualism among native Spanish speakers. Specifically, I construct an instrument consisting in the interaction between years of language exposure during compulsory education and an indicator for native Spanish speakers, considering that the reform did not affect oral Catalan proficiency among native Catalan speakers and assuming cohort trends unrelated to the reform are homogeneous across language groups. IV/TSLS estimates reveal no causal effect of increased oral Catalan skills, induced by school language exposure among native Spanish speakers, on any measure of neighbourhood quality. Falsification exercises aimed at validating the main identification assumption, along with robustness checks addressing potential confounders and alternative mechanisms, support the identification strategy and reinforce the main findings. Overall, the results suggest that although the reform significantly raised oral Catalan proficiency among native Spanish speakers, this variation in language skills does not translate into changes in residential sorting or neighbourhood quality. |
| Keywords: | Local Language Skills, Bilingualism, Language-in-education Policy, Neighbourhood Quality. JEL classification: I28; Z13; R23. |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ira:wpaper:202513 |
| By: | Sebastian Ritter (AQR-IREA Research group, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.); Vicente Royuela (AQR-IREA Research group, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.) |
| Abstract: | As the EU races to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target, regional disparities in transition progress threaten to leave some territories behind. We introduce the Regional Green Transition Performance Index (RGTP), a novel composite measure capturing progress across seven pillars (environmental; energy; circular economy and waste; sustainable development; just transition; innovation and policy; and transport and mobility) for 232 European NUTS2 regions over 14 years. Drawing on 31 indicators, we map spatial patterns and dynamic processes. Furthermore, we argue that the green transition acts as a structural force whose potential effects on regional development can be expressed along two axes: vulnerability and opportunity. We propose an alternative measure of Regional Green Transition Opportunity index (RGTO) which we combine with the existent Regional Green Transition Vulnerability index (RGTV) of Rodríguez-Pose & Bartalucci (2024) to construct a simple 2×2 typology of regions. We translate this evidence into a policy playbook: pair risk-mitigation with opportunity-creation and embed diffusion mechanisms so gains propagate beyond individual regions. The paper contributes an open dataset, a transparent methodology to separate performance, opportunities, and vulnerabilities which responds to the EU’s performance-based policy agenda by offering a region-level monitoring tool that complements cohesion instruments (ERDF/CF/JTF/ESF+) and flags where to reduce vulnerabilities while mobilizing opportunities in the green transition. |
| Keywords: | Green Transition; European Union; Regional Inequality; Green Transition Index. JEL classification: C43; Q56; R11; R12. |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ira:wpaper:202602 |
| By: | Parker, Madeleine E.G. PhD; Chapple, Karen PhD |
| Abstract: | California faces the loss of thousands of affordable rental units in the coming decade as affordability restrictions—known as covenants—expire. These agreements, signed between housing developers and government agencies, typically last 15 to 30 years and require that units be rented at below-market rates. When covenants expire, owners can convert units to market-rate housing, often displacing lower-income families.In Southern California alone, over 17, 000 affordable units are at risk of conversion, and nearly 70% of these units are located near high-quality transit. If the owners of these properties do not enter into new covenants, these units will be placed on the open market, likely leading to the displacement of lower-income residents to the urban outskirts, resulting in longer commutes and reduced access to reliable transit. To better understand the risk of losing affordable units, we analyzed historic data on affordable housing conversion and identified key factors that influence whether at-risk properties are preserved or lost. |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| Date: | 2026–03–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt7cg95810 |
| By: | Wanqi Liu; Rong Zhao |
| Abstract: | Restaurants, cafes, and other commercial amenities are among the most visible markers of neighborhood change, yet whether their arrival drives house price appreciation or merely follows rising demand remains an open empirical question. This study investigates the causal effect of commercial entry on residential property values in Greater London. Exploiting the staggered timing of 21, 189 restaurant and cafe openings across 4, 835 Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs)--identified through Energy Performance Certificate records--we implement an event study design with LSOA-specific linear trends that passes the parallel trends test (F = 1.04, p = 0.384). We find that house prices rise monotonically after commercial entry, reaching +4.1% at four years post-treatment (p |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2603.03260 |
| By: | Andreas de Barros; Theresa Lubozha |
| Abstract: | Whether targeted foundational instruction yields broad, long-term human capital gains is central to education policy but largely untested. We provide causal evidence from Zambia's government-run foundational skills program in public primary schools. After two years, a randomized trial shows the program increases literacy by 0.10 and numeracy by 0.15 standard deviations. In mathematics, effects on targeted skills are 2.6 times larger than on comprehensive assessments, without detectable transfer to adjacent domains. Adding professional development doubles per-pupil costs without additional learning gains. Despite limited short-run transfer, event-study estimates show positive effects on grade-7 language and mathematics exam scores in early adolescence. |
| Keywords: | field experiment, foundational skills, human capital, long-term effects, skill formation, skill transfer |
| JEL: | C93 H52 I21 I28 J24 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12542 |
| By: | Florian Dorn; Marie-Theres Gasser; Kevin Kloiber; Simon Krause; Carla Krolage |
| Abstract: | Hosting mega-sports events generates optimistic projections of economic benefits, yet empirical evidence on actual local returns remains mixed. Focusing on the UEFA EURO 2024 in Germany, this paper provides causal evidence on the short-term local consumption effects of hosting mega-events. We leverage anonymized daily card spending data at the postcode level to measure changes in consumer spending. Using a difference-in-differences and a local projection framework, we document a statistically significant and economically meaningful 3% increase in consumer spending in host cities during the tournament. This effect is driven entirely by international visitors, whose spending increases by more than 6%, and is concentrated in the group stage and on match days. Domestic spending does not change on aggregate, but exhibits spatial displacement. The gains are highly concentrated in city centers and tourist-facing sectors. Overall, our findings provide policymakers with highly granular evidence on the localized economic effects of mega-sports events, highlighting how temporary demand shocks reshape intra-urban consumption patterns and concentrate gains in central, tourism-oriented areas. |
| Keywords: | EURO 2024, sports events, consumer spending, impact evaluation, microgeographic analysis |
| JEL: | Z20 R11 L83 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12555 |
| By: | Chiodin, Alessio; Manera, Matteo; Maranzano, Paolo; Monturano, Gianluca |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic generated highly heterogeneous economic effects across territories, reflecting differences in local production structures and spatial organization. This paper examines the geography of short-run economic fragility during the first wave of the pandemic by identifying spatially-coherent clusters of municipalities exposed to lockdown-induced shutdowns. Using municipal-level data on Italian suspended firms, workers, and value added in Spring 2020, we apply a Ward-like hierarchical clustering approach under spatial constraints that combines socio-economic dissimilarities with geographical proximity. We first analyze Lombardy, the region most severely affected during the initial phase, and then extend the analysis to the entire Italian territory. The results show that clustering based solely on socio-economic variables mainly reflects differences in economic scale, while incorporating spatial information reveals coherent territorial structures. Industrial and peripheral municipalities appear to be more exposed to shutdown measures than large service-oriented urban centers. At the national level, spatial partitions reproduce Italy’s hierarchical territorial structure, from the North–South divide to intermediate macro-regions. These findings highlight the role of spatially targeted policies and the importance of pre-existing territorial structures in shaping the economic impact of systemic shocks. |
| Keywords: | Climate Change, Political Economy, Public Economics |
| Date: | 2026–03–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemwp:396373 |
| By: | Patricia Agyapong |
| Abstract: | In 2007, Kosmos Energy and Tullow Oil found Ghana’s most significant column of high-grade offshore oil and gas. In this paper, I use geocoded household data to examine the socio-economic effects of this oil and gas discovery on the local communities. I conduct two quasi-experimental analysis and find that oil and gas discovery increased real income for households close to the fields, with the benefits being larger for households in districts with a high proportion of skilled workers and limited to non-poor districts. However, there is no apparent effect on employment, total consumption expenditure and poverty. |
| Keywords: | natural resources; oil and gas; local economic impacts; household welfare; spatial difference-in-differences; Ghana |
| JEL: | Q33 O13 R11 D31 C21 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csa:wpaper:2026-02 |
| By: | Di Casola, Paola; Grothe, Magdalena |
| Abstract: | This paper quantifies the role of housing wealth in the transmission of monetary policy to consumption in 20 advanced economies. Using Bayesian VAR models we identify structural shocks with a novel combination of sign and maximum forecast error variance restrictions, isolating the housing wealth channel through counterfactual impulse responses. We find that the housing wealth multiplier — the sensitivity of consumption to exogenous house price changes — is strongly correlated with outright homeownership rates and is higher for durable consumption. Cross-country differences in the monetary policy transmission to consumption are largely driven by the cash-flow channel. JEL Classification: E21, E52, E44, R31, C32 |
| Keywords: | cash-flow channel, consumption, local projections, structural BVAR |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20263204 |
| By: | Bäcker-Peral, Verónica; Hazell, Joe; Mian, Atif |
| Abstract: | Each month, a fraction of UK property leases are extended by 90 years or more. We construct a new dataset using thousands of these natural experiments since 2000 and estimate the expected long-term housing yield, y*. After remaining steady at around 5 percent, y* starts to decline when the Great Recession hits and reaches a low of 2.7 percent in 2024. The decline is steeper in inelastic markets, while y* remains higher in regions more exposed to long-run climate risk. Our estimate of y* is updated in real time using public data. |
| JEL: | E32 G12 Q54 R31 R38 |
| Date: | 2026–03–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:129062 |
| By: | Bryan, Gharad; Leite, Flávia; Maleronka, Camila; Oliveira Cunha, Juliana; Soto Vieira, Caterina; Tsivanidis, Nick |
| Abstract: | Land value capture (LVC) can be a powerful tool for local governments to finance urban infrastructure and recover part of the unearned landvalue increases that result from public investments or regulations. This helps ensure that the benefits of urban development are reinvested in the city for the benefit of the wider population. São Paulo, the largest city in Latin America, has been a pioneer in implementing LVC. Over the last two decades, the Brazilian city has deployed multiple mechanisms to capture increases in land value. These include two air right tools: the Charges for Additional Building Rights (OODC) – applied throughout the city – and the Certificates of Additional Construction Potential (CEPACs) – tied to special planning zones called Urban Operations (UOs). Both instruments allow the sale of development rights beyond the basic zoning allowance, with the proceeds earmarked for public infrastructure investment. Between 2004 and 2022, these mechanisms generated more than USD 4.5 billion in revenue, equivalent on average to 8% of the city’s annual property tax revenue. Although both instruments aim to monetise “air rights”, their design and impact differ substantially. Drawing on descriptive analysis of administrative and survey data, as well as interviews with developers and policymakers, this case study examines how the two instruments work on the ground, including how they perform in terms of revenue generation, investment, and urban development outcomes. The discussion highlights key considerations and lessons for other cities contemplating the adoption of air rights. |
| Keywords: | sustainable growth; urban planning; municipal governments; Cities that Work |
| JEL: | R14 J01 E6 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:137691 |
| By: | Isaak Mengesha; Debraj Roy |
| Abstract: | Economic growth is conventionally analyzed at the national level, yet cities generate the bulk of global output. Here we construct GDP trajectories for 8, 808 functional urban areas (FUAs) across 165 countries over 1993-2019 using satellite-derived nighttime light data and identify 17 distinct, persistent growth regimes through clustering of full temporal trajectories. Rather than converging toward a common frontier, FUAs inhabit distinct economic niches-analogous to ecological niches-defined by shared volatility profiles, shock responses, and long-run dynamics that transcend national boundaries. Cities within the same country frequently belong to different regimes, while structurally similar cities on different continents share the same one; regime membership explains 16% of within-country growth variance beyond country fixed effects. National-level convergence emerges as an aggregation artifact: conditional convergence operates within regimes, not globally. A directed propagation network reveals that shocks transmit along lines of structural similarity rather than geographic proximity, with advanced economies exporting disturbances and emerging economies absorbing or amplifying them. Within-country spatial inequality declines with industrialization maturity, consistent with growth initially concentrating in leading cities before diffusing across the urban system. The global economy is better understood as an ecology of heterogeneous urban growth regimes than as a collection of nations on a shared development path. |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2603.16007 |
| By: | Chihiro Shimizu |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a spatial model of remote work, firm technology, and intergenerational care within the Becker-Diewert household-production tradition. The firm's technology is modeled using the Normalized Quadratic cost function, which allows the office-remote labor substitution elasticity to vary with factor prices. Residential space is decomposed into living and home-office components. Childcare and eldercare have separate production functions with own time and market services as substitutes. A generational structure distinguishes children, workers, and the elderly; only workers commute. I derive shadow-price bounds extending Schreyer and Diewert (2014) to five service prices, a spatial full-income identity with care surpluses, and rent gradients that flatten with remote-work technology. Heterogeneous households sort by remote-work capacity and care needs. Population aging amplifies the value of remote work as a care-enabling technology and generates a rent rotation between residential and commercial real estate. |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tcr:wpaper:e225 |
| By: | Anderson, Ronald W. |
| Abstract: | Since 1978, China has developed strongly using a particular form of capitalism that has relied on close relations between private enterprise and the state, and the continuing presence of state-owned enterprises, both centrally and at local levels. This model has been criticised as being responsible for the rapid rise of debt since 2010, and more recently for the slowdown of growth. I assess the challenges to China’s stated growth ambitions, emphasising the demographic factors that vary across regions. Using examples at the regional and local levels, I illustrate the workings of this system and highlight the challenges for adapting it to support China’s growth ambitions for the coming decades. The conclusion is that China’s public-sector development can no longer be financed principally through land sales, and Chinese savers will need to shift away from real estate and redirect their investments toward equities and other capital-market vehicles. |
| Keywords: | debt overhang; enterprise reform; infrastructure; local public finance; state capitalism |
| JEL: | F3 G3 J1 |
| Date: | 2025–06–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:137731 |
| By: | Genakos, Christos; Kyrkopoulou, Eleni |
| Abstract: | What is the impact of an increase of lower-ability students in a university class? We examine a natural experiment in which students from large, low-income families had the chance to transfer to academic programs at a local university. Multiple law changes meant that there was significant, quasi-random variability in the number of transferred students over time, which was orthogonal to the quality of receiving students. We create a novel dataset for the top economics department in Greece and show that the social policy had a negative educational impact by uniformly lowering recipient students' academic performance once the proportion of transferred students exceeded a certain threshold. |
| Keywords: | externalities; peer effects; unintended consequences; university education |
| JEL: | H52 I20 |
| Date: | 2026–03–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:137495 |
| By: | Melecky, Martin; Ruiz Ortega, Claudia; Bizhan, Asset; Jambal, Ganbaatar |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the employment and sales effects of two widely used financial support instruments for small and medium-sized enterprises, interest rate subsidies and credit guarantees, using administrative program data from Kazakhstan matched to the universe of firms. Utilizing staggered intervention rollouts and a difference-in-differences design, the analysis reveals significant differences across program designs and local labor market conditions. Interest rate subsidies, despite their large fiscal costs, fail to improve firm performance: beneficiary firms experience a 10 percent decline in employment and no significant increase in sales. Fully subsidized credit guarantees show no discernible effects on sales or employment. By contrast, a market-aligned, fee-based partial credit guarantee that ensures lender and borrower risk-sharing increases employment by 24 percent and sales by 21 percent, with particularly stronger effects among women-led and formally incorporated businesses. These employment gains are substantially larger in regions with higher pre-program unemployment, suggesting that well-designed credit guarantees are more likely to generate net job creation in labor markets with greater slack, rather than merely reallocating workers across firms. Overall, the findings underscore the pivotal role of incentive-compatible program design and local labor market condit ions in determining the effectiveness of financial policies for small and medium-sized enterprises. |
| Date: | 2026–03–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11344 |
| By: | Chihiro Shimizu |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a spatial extension of Becker's theory of time allocation, building on the generalized household-production framework of Schreyer and Diewert (2014). Households allocate time across market labor, household work, home leisure, and external leisure at three locations: home, workplace, and amenity venues. Commuting lowers the effective time endowment; leisure travel raises the full price of external leisure. The shadow price of leisure is bounded by min{wrS, w}, extending the result of Schreyer and Diewert (2014) to a spatial setting. I derive a spatial full-income identity, equilibrium rent gradients with respect to eight parameters, second-order properties of the rent function, and connect to superlative index theory through a Regional Utility Index. An econometric framework for four corner-solution regimes maps the model into observable data. |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tcr:wpaper:e226 |
| By: | Liao, Yanjun (Penny) (Resources for the Future); Walls, Margaret A. (Resources for the Future); DeAngeli, Emma (Resources for the Future) |
| Abstract: | With increasing threats from sea level rise (SLR) and hurricanes, state and local governments in coastal areas face difficult adaptation decisions about infrastructure. Should they continue to build and maintain infrastructure to keep communities viable or forgo those expenditures and instead facilitate a managed retreat? We examine these questions in the context of sewer expansion to address the increasing risk of failure of onsite waste disposal (septic) systems, in the face of SLR. Using a spatial discontinuity design around the boundary of sewer service areas, we find that properties with sewer access are 30 percent higher in value per acre of lot size than those on septic, indicating a strong preference for extending sewer access as a solution to problems of failing septic systems. However, we also show that sewer access induces more development exposed to flooding and SLR. These findings highlight an important adaptation challenge for local policymakers: reducing the impacts of climate change on existing residents while not worsening exposure to risk in the future. |
| Date: | 2026–03–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-26-05 |
| By: | Samuel Berlinski; Michele Giannola; Alessandro Toppeta |
| Abstract: | We study the relative effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and interaction of family- and school-based learning interventions using a randomized controlled trial in Colombia that assigns children to a parental engagement program, a teacher professional development program, both, or a control group. Both interventions are grounded in a child-centered learning approach that emphasizes active engagement and the progression from informal to formal mathematical understanding. Each intervention independently generates sizable and statistically similar gains in early numeracy (0.17SD and 0.20SD). Combining them produces no additional learning gains, suggesting that the two interventions act as substitutes over the time horizon and skill domain we study. When benefits accruing to future cohorts are taken into account, the teacher development program becomes at least as cost-effective as, and potentially more cost-effective than, the parental engagement intervention. Our results suggest that, in this setting, strategically concentrating resources on a single binding constraint -- either at home or in school -- maximizes the short-run learning gains per dollar spent. |
| Keywords: | families, schools, human capital |
| JEL: | A2 H52 I25 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12563 |
| By: | Germà Bel (IREA-UB & Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.); Joël Bühler (IREA-UB & Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.) |
| Abstract: | Governments around the globe are considering taking back direct control as an option to reform privatized public services, particularly on the local level. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find that remunicipalization of urban water leads to price reductions of about 3-6 cents per cubic meter in larger municipalities, but the effect does not extend to smaller municipalities. Given our finding of unchanged water usage, these reductions in large municipalities translate directly to consumers’ bills. As remunicipalization typically happens when a contract with a private firm expires, we investigate whether the threat of competition or remunicipalization arising from expiring contracts itself also leads to price reductions. After contract expiry without remunicipalization, water prices decline by 2-3 cents per cubic meter. Thus, while remunicipalization reduces prices particularly in larger municipalities, threats at contract expiry have a smaller, but more uniform price effect. |
| Keywords: | Remunicipalization; Urban Water; Prices; Privatization; Public Services. JEL classification: H13; H41; H70; L95. |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ira:wpaper:202603 |