Search

The cities and towns of India constitute the world's second largest urban system and contribute over 50% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). This phenomenon has been neglected by the existing studies and writings on urban India. By considering 59 large cities in India and employing new economic geography models, this paper investigates the relevant state- and city-specific determinants of urban agglomeration and urban economic growth. In addition, the effect of urban agglomeration on India's urban economic growth is estimated. The empirical results show that agglomeration economies are policy-induced as well as market-determined and offer evidence of the strong positive effect of agglomeration on urban economic growth in India's urban system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The empirical relationship between trade protection and economic growth is surprisingly fragile, as shown in a number of other papers. We address one possible explanation for these findings: that the relationship is contingent on the pattern of comparative advantage, following the endogenous growth literature. Our findings suggest that such contingencies do in fact exist-in particular, the correlation between tariffs and growth is strong and positive for skill-abundant countries-and are robust to the choice of control variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the increasing share of the EU budget devoted to Regional Policy, several studies have tried to identify the impact of structural funds on economic growth. However, so far no consensus has been reached. We assess Regional Policy effects through a non-experimental comparison group method, the regression discontinuity design, and a novel regional dataset for the 1994-2006 period. We exploit the allocation rule of EU transfers by comparing regions with a per capita GDP level just below the eligibility threshold (75% of EU average) with those just above. Our findings show a positive impact of EU Regional Policy on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]