Place-based remote work incentives have emerged as a new tool for regional development, aiming to attract talent and stimulate local economies. Tulsa Remote is one of the nation’s largest and best-funded programs, offering a 10,000 grant to remote workers relocating to Tulsa, Oklahoma. This study examines the spillover and sometimes unexpected patterns associated with the program’s introduction using county-level migration data and individual-level microdata. The analysis documents that the implementation of Tulsa Remote Program coincides with increased interstate in-migration, alongside reduced intrastate inflows and increased intrastate outflows. The program is associated with stronger migration responses among married, middle-aged individuals with moderate incomes originating from high-cost metropolitan areas. The findings highlight both the potential and the trade-offs of well-funded place-based policies in shaping migration dynamics.
In the real world, pollution taxation often interacts with privatization. This paper incorporates the pollution tax and privatization into a unified general equilibrium framework, and analyzes how the pollution tax and privatization affect skilled–unskilled wage inequality. For the pollution tax, an increase in the pollution tax will reduce wage inequality in most cases. For privatization, the effect of privatization relies on the strength of the pollution tax. Specifically, privatization tends to reduce wage inequality (unless the capital market is open) when there is a high pollution tax, and privatization is likely to increase wage inequality when there is a low pollution tax.
We study how long-run employment decentralization shapes local government responses to adverse economic shocks. Since the 1970s, employment activity has increasingly shifted from central cities toward suburban areas, generating heterogeneous fiscal environments within commuting zones. Using the China trade shock following China’s WTO accession as a source of exogenous variation, we show that central cities experience larger revenue losses and reduce infrastructure spending more sharply, consistent with stronger adjustment to longer-lasting fiscal pressures in central cities, while financial reserves represent an additional margin of adjustment among suburban governments. Similar results under a Bartik-style employment-shock specification indicate that the heterogeneous fiscal responses are not unique to the China-specific trade channel. Our findings highlight how employment decentralization generates heterogeneous fiscal responses within the same local labor market.
As a new urban mode that considers digitalization and greenization, the smart city provides an efficient way to reduce carbon emissions for green development. By constructing a dynamic differential game model, this study clarifies the optimal strategy selection of smart cities for inhibiting carbon emissions and explains the internal mechanism behind it while adhering to a Technological, Organizational, and Environmental framework. A multi-period difference-in-differences model is taken to evaluated the implementation effects and executive mechanisms of smart city policies (SCP) on carbon emissions with Chinese city data from 2003 to 2019. It can be found that inter-regional smart cities’ cooperation provided the optimal strategy to effectively reduce carbon emissions. Mechanism analysis showed that SCP reduce carbon emission through technological progress, resource allocation, energy-saving, information agglomeration, and carbon absorption enhancement. A multidimensional policy system plays a synergistic role in carbon reduction. Heterogeneity analysis showed that SCP’s low-carbon effects are more significant in type I large, eastern, western, highly marketable, and cities with high environmental constraints. The spatial effect showed that SCP can reduce carbon emissions of neighboring cities. This study supports the vital role of SCP in carbon reduction and provides relevant policy suggestions for achieving green transition in China.
Against the backdrop of interregional solid-waste flows and tightening land constraints, this paper examines whether the Zero-Waste City pilot policy improves urban land green use efficiency, and whether such effects extend beyond pilot jurisdictions through spatial spillovers. Using panel data for 284 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2010 to 2024, we treat the policy as a staggered quasi-natural experiment. We identify local policy effects with a multi-period difference-in-differences design, and estimate spillover effects using a spatial exposure test and a two-way fixed-effects spatial Durbin model. We further probe potential channels and supplement the baseline results with an imputation-based modern DID estimator. The results reveal that the Zero-Waste City pilot generates both significant local effects and significant positive spatial spillovers. Urban land green use efficiency rises substantially in pilot cities, while neighboring cities also exhibit a statistically significant positive response. The channel analysis suggests that, within pilot cities, the policy increases the intensity of construction land use and strengthens the capacity to organize land supply and reallocate resources under constraints on existing construction land, providing evidence consistent with the interpretation that these factors may serve as channels. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the local policy effect is more pronounced in cities located southeast of the Hu Huanyong Line, in cities with stronger dependence on land finance, and in cities with a higher initial industrial share. The supplementary imputation-based modern DID estimates yield qualitatively consistent results. A wide range of robustness checks, including parallel-trend tests, permutation placebo tests, lagged-treatment specifications, alternative dependent variables, sample exclusions, and alternative spatial weight matrices, further corroborate the baseline findings. Overall, the evidence indicates that the Zero-Waste City pilot has moved beyond waste management per se and become embedded in broader processes of land allocation and regional interaction.
This paper analyses the link between global value chain participation and intra-regional income inequality across European regions from 2003 to 2010. It combines regional input–output data to construct different indicators of global value chain participation and income data for regions at NUTS-2 level. Using fixed effects and instrumental variable estimations, we show that it matters how regions participate in global value chains: forward participation is on average linked to higher inequality at the top of the income distribution, while backward participation, in contrast, is not significantly associated with inequality. This relationship varies across industries: sectors such as manufacturing, transport and communication, and business activities are among the main drivers of this relationship. Moreover, the effect of forward participation on top income inequality varies by development level and institutional quality, showing that it is more pronounced for less developed regions and regions with lower institutional quality. These findings offer a new perspective on the link between regional global value chain integration and increased top income inequality.
This study examines regional differences in labor market stratification across the pre-, mid-, and post-pandemic phases (2017, 2020, and 2023, respectively) in South Korea and investigates how the role of remote work feasibility in this stratification differed across regions and phases. We sourced data from the 5th, 6th, and 7th (2017, 2020, and 2023, respectively) Korean Working Conditions Survey. This non-continuous cross sectional survey samples approximately 50,000 employed individuals aged 15 years and older nationwide. We identified labor market stratification in capital and non-capital regions using latent class analysis applied to work precariousness and signal effect. The findings reveal three-tier labor market structures in both regions across all pandemic phases, though the variable profiles defining each tier differed by region and over time. In both regions, the attributes distinguishing the upper-tier weakened over time, and region-specific patterns emerged. The association between remote work and labor market position was not uniform but varied across regions and phases. In the capital region, remote work feasibility was temporarily associated with the upper and lower tiers during the pandemic but did not persist as a distinctive class feature afterward. In the non-capital region, remote work feasibility remained more closely tied to the middle and lower segments in both pre- and post-pandemic periods. The study highlights that regional context may shape the labor market tiers with which remote work feasibility is associated, conditioning how the opportunities and risk that changing work arrangements may create are distributed among workers within regions.
Asymmetric decentralization is a notion that is widely mobilized in the recent literature, yet whose conceptual contours remain relatively blurred. As emphasized by Allain-Dupré et al. (2020), asymmetry encompasses highly heterogeneous realities. In some cases, explicit statutory differentiations are introduced between territories, often at the regional level, in order to respond to identity-based, linguistic, or historical claims. In others, territorial differentiations are introduced from a functional or financial perspective, notably when they concern the status of the capital city. For example, in Italy, the constitutional reform in 2001 introduced the possibility for Italian regions to request the attribution of additional forms and particular conditions of autonomy (Fiorillo et al. 2021). In Spain, a highly asymmetric quasi-federal system with the emergence of 17 autonomous communities was the outcome of the constitutional process (Flynn 2004). In the Russian context, some regions are allowed to negotiate a high level of autonomy from the center on a bilateral basis, leading to a strong asymmetrical design (Martinez-Vazquez 2007).
This paper shows how granular subnational data reveal asymmetries invisible in national aggregates by constructing indicators of fiscal autonomy, revenue composition and fiscal dependence for Italian regional and municipal governments using the novel OECD’s REGOFI and MUNIFI databases. The analysis documents persistent asymmetries along three distinct layers: the constitutional divide between special-statute regions (SSRs) and ordinary-statute regions (OSRs), the north–south development gradient, and the contrasting patterns between governmental tiers. SSRs exhibit markedly higher fiscal autonomy and substantially lower transfer dependence. At the municipal level, the pattern reverses: ordinary-region municipalities show higher own-revenue ratios, producing a configuration of autonomous regions with dependent municipalities versus dependent regions with more autonomous ones. The north–south gradient remains pronounced municipally, where large revenue asymmetries coexist with broadly convergent per capita expenditure. This nominal equalisation cannot be taken as evidence of equivalent service provision. From a policy perspective, greater regional differentiation should be balanced with effective equalisation mechanisms to avoid adverse consequences for service provision in poorer regions.
This article examines the conditions under which asymmetric arrangements granting enhanced fiscal powers to minority nationalist regions sustain or undermine the legitimacy of the territorial decentralisation model among the remaining regions, drawing on evidence from Spain. While fiscal federalism scholarship has largely focussed on whether asymmetric arrangements accommodate minority nationalist regions and reduce secessionist pressures, less attention has been paid to how such arrangements are perceived by regions operating under the common decentralisation framework. Building on theories of concessionary federalism, the article argues that the stability of asymmetric systems depends not only on negotiated concessions between central governments and minority regions, but also on the conditional acceptance of those settlements by governments in other regions. Drawing on elite interviews with representatives of finance departments in four Spanish autonomous communities—Andalusia, Extremadura, Murcia and the Valencian Community—contextualised with survey data on public attitudes towards Spain’s territorial model, the study examines three dimensions of legitimacy: procedural legitimacy, systemic coherence and distributive fairness. The findings suggest that fiscal asymmetry is less likely to be accepted when it is seen as insufficiently transparent, as weakening the broader decentralised system or as generating persistent distributive grievances. Under such conditions, asymmetric arrangements may generate new territorial tensions rather than promoting stability. The article highlights the importance of transparent bargaining, robust intergovernmental forums and perceived fairness in sustaining the legitimacy of asymmetric decentralisation.
Income disparities across Turkish provinces have persisted for decades despite sustained regional policy efforts. This paper analyzes the spatial structure and dynamics of regional income inequality in Türkiye from 2004 to 2023 using an integrated framework combining inequality decomposition, spatial econometrics, and distributional dynamics. Using provincial GDP per capita data for 81 provinces nested into 11 regions, we show that income inequality is dominated by between-region disparities and that observed spatial polarization is significantly stronger than would arise under a spatially random income distribution. Evidence from classical and spatial β -convergence models indicates absolute convergence across provinces, but at a slow pace, implying long-lived regional disparities, with spatial error models highlighting the role of unobserved spatially structured factors. Classical and spatial Markov chain analyses reveal strong persistence in provincial income rankings and spatially conditioned mobility traps, whereby transition probabilities depend critically on neighboring income levels. Overall, the results point to a rigid, threshold-dependent spatial hierarchy and underscore the need for geographically coordinated, cluster-based regional development policies that explicitly account for spatial dependence.
This paper provides quasi-experimental evidence on the effects of High-speed rail (HSR) access on local economic performance by focussing on the 2013 opening to passenger traffic of the MedioPadana HSR station in Reggio Emilia, Italy—a non-metropolitan area situated between the major nodes of Milan and Bologna. Using Difference-in-Differences (DiD) as the primary empirical framework, complemented by event-study diagnostics, placebo analyses, explicit spatial exposure specifications, and corroborative Synthetic Control Method (SCM) and Synthetic Difference-in-Differences (SDiD) exercises, and leveraging a rich economic/innovation dataset from 1980 to 2023, the study finds that improved HSR connectivity is associated with a sustained increase in regional Gross Value Added (GVA) of about 9.4
In recent years, digitalization policies have accelerated across Europe, and the members’ National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) have channeled substantial resources for digital investments across sectors and regions. In this context, the need for data-driven methods able to assess the effectiveness of adopted policies in improving overall performance while narrowing territorial divides has increased. To address this need, this paper proposes a policy-oriented approach to evaluate digital investments in light of pre-existing regional conditions. Focusing on the Italian NRRP, it adopts a regionalized version of the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) to conduct a comparative analysis of investments and performance. The results provide meaningful policy implications, revealing misalignments between funding allocation and initial conditions and the risk of exacerbating existing divides. Overall, the application demonstrates that the framework serves as both an evaluation tool and a support for identifying appropriate targeted policy strategies, highlighting its practical role in guiding policy.
The economic returns to human capital are conventionally explained by individual attributes, yet the role of the regional context in which workers are embedded remains underexplored. This study investigates how the returns to human capital vary across structurally distinct types of local labor markets, with particular emphasis on the task-based nature of occupational skills. Departing from approaches that proxy human capital by educational attainment alone, this study integrates task-based measures of occupational skill with a structural classification of local labor markets, thereby linking the spatial division of labor to the structure of wage compensation. Local labor markets are classified into three types—low-tech manufacturing based, mid-/high-tech manufacturing based, and knowledge-intensive service based—using multivariate functional principal component analysis and k-means clustering. Four occupational skill factors (cognitive, technical, interpersonal, and physical) are derived from 44 task dimensions across 537 occupations through exploratory factor analysis, linked to individual-level panel data, and analyzed using fixed-effects models. The results show that returns to cognitive and interpersonal skills are highest in knowledge-intensive service-based regions, whereas returns to physical skills are relatively higher in low-tech manufacturing-based regions. Returns to cognitive skills tend to rise with career experience, while returns to interpersonal and physical skills tend to decline. These findings indicate that the value of human capital is jointly shaped by individual skill profiles and the structural characteristics of local labor markets and underscore the importance of incorporating spatial context into the analysis of human capital returns.
This paper examines the determinants of gasoline price dispersion across approximately 120,000 US gas stations using daily price and station-level data over 93 days. Within a structural framework, we decompose observed gasoline price variation into temporal, spatial, and station-specific components. Extending the analysis period from 30 to 90 days shows that the contribution of time fixed effects, a proxy for nationwide/temporal effects (including crude oil prices and national-level structural breaks), rise from 0.32
The decentralisation of policy functions to subnational governments needs not be uniform across jurisdictions and may instead be differentiated to reflect differences in administrative capacity, preferences, territorial characteristics and governance needs. This paper examines whether differentiated decentralisation arrangements are systematically associated with regional economic performance. Using harmonised data for middle-tier regions across OECD countries, we combine cross-sectional, within-region and event-time analyses. The results show that regions enjoying differentiated institutional status tend to exhibit higher income levels than standard jurisdictions, even after accounting for observable characteristics and time-invariant regional factors. However, the limited within-region variation available in the data provides no indication that changes in decentralisation status are systematically associated with improved economic performance, while descriptive event-time evidence based on the single observed institutional transition episode reveals no robust post-reform gains in economic outcomes. Taken together, the findings suggest that the stronger performance observed among differentiated regions is primarily associated with long-standing structural and institutional characteristics rather than differentiation itself. More broadly, the results indicate that differentiated decentralisation may serve objectives beyond economic performance, including territorial accommodation, governance responsiveness and the management of territorial diversity.
China’s urbanization process is astonishing, this paper innovatively proposes a theoretical framework for the impact of local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) on imbalanced urbanization and empirically analyzes the unexpected effects of these local government-backed investment units on land and population urbanization. Using the panel data of 281 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2017 and establishing the double fixed-effect models, we find that LGFVs are influential in accelerating the urbanization of land and population in China. However, it also drives to factor imbalances between population and land, especially in the less economically developed western regions. Further mechanism analysis indicates that LGFVs promote both population growth and urbanization through increased public utility supply. However, by expanding urban spatial supply, it unilaterally accelerates land urbanization, thereby resulting in factor imbalance. These above conclusions provide evidence for understanding the unexpected effects of LGFVs and provide recommendations for the management of financing instruments.
This paper examines how asymmetric regional decentralization shapes political competition in democracies. While decentralization has expanded considerably since World War II, the political consequences of increasing asymmetries in the distribution of authority across regions within states remain poorly understood. Drawing on survey data from Belgium, Canada, Germany, and Spain, as well as panel data covering 709 legislative elections in 73 democracies between 1960 and 2018, we analyze how centralized, symmetrically decentralized, and asymmetrically decentralized territorial arrangements affect economic voting and party system nationalization. The results show that asymmetric decentralization weakens electoral accountability in national elections while strengthening it in regional elections. In addition, it contributes to greater territorial variation in patterns of partisan support, thereby reducing the nationalization of party systems. These findings highlight the distinctive political consequences of asymmetric decentralization for democratic representation and accountability.
This study analyzes the relationship between institutional quality and green innovation in Italian regions. We examine how varying levels of institutional quality influence the regional capacity to generate green innovation, disentangling the effects related to economic institutions (corruption, government effectiveness, and regulatory quality) from the impacts associated with political institutions (rule of law and voice and accountability). Using a panel of data for 2004–2018 on green patents, we use an instrumental variable approach to control for endogeneity and several robustness checks. Our results show that the most critical drivers of green innovation are related to the quality of political institutions. These findings remain robust, even when checking for economic and environmental controls, demonstrating that green innovation is more related to political decisions and social capital than to innovation in general. These results will support policy makers and the national and regional level in defining tailored place-based policies in Italy.
Population aging intensifies urban elderly care pressures in China, as urban areas face shortages of elderly care facilities and strained healthcare resources. Villages for elderly care (VECs) have emerged, yet their bottom-up development causes homogeneous competition, hindering sustainability. This study, taking Zhejiang Province as a case, applies rural spatial commodification theory to clarify VECs’ spatial production logic and resource allocation mechanism, uncover the roles of government in the spatial evolution of VECs, and explore institutional embedding pathways. It constructs a suitability assessment system for VECs’ location, uses spatial quantitative analysis to calculate grid-based spatial resource richness, and analyzes multi-scale spatial disparities. Results show that 28.27
