Byer, produktivitet og velfærd – en geografisk ligevægtsmodel for Danmark

I papiret præsenteres en model af husholdningers og virksomheders valg af geografisk placering baseret på kommunale forskelle i løn og ejendomsleje. Modellen giver to resultater: 1) Produktivitetsgevinsterne af et øget ejendomsudbud i København er større, end hvissamme forøgelse finder sted andre steder i landet. 2) Bedre muligheder for hjemmearbejde flytter bopæle fra by til land og arbejdspladser i den anden retning, men har begrænsede effekter på produktiviteten

Does reduced cash beneit worsen educational outcomes of refugee children?

In 2002 the Danish government reduced the size of cash transfers to new refugees. We exploit the reform to study the effect of lower transfers on educational outomces of refugee children. Surprisingly, the reduction in parental benefits has no negative effect on educational outcomes of the children, such as test scores, probability of completion of the 9th grade or probability of enrollment in upper-secondary education. Likewise, children of parents affected by the reform are not forced to earn more in youth. Refugee parents increase their labour supply and earn more to compensate for the loss in income, but on average the increase in earnings does not compensate for the decline in benefits

Eye disease and development.

Abstract: This study advances the hypothesis that cross-country variation in the historical incidence of eye disease has influenced the current global distribution of per capita income. The theory is that pervasive eye disease diminished the incentive to accumulate skills, thereby delaying the fertility transition and the take-off to sustained growth in income per capita. In order to gauge the influence from eye disease incidence empirically, we draw on an important fact from the field of epidemiology: Exposure to solar ultraviolet B radiation (UVB-R) is an underlying determinant of several forms of eye disease; the most important being cataract, which is currently the leading cause of blindness worldwide. Using a satellite-based measure of UVB-R, we document -consistent with the proposed hypothesis -that societies more exposed to UVB-R are poorer and underwent the fertility transition with a significant delay compared to the forerunners. These findings are robust to the inclusion of an extensive set of climate and geography controls such as latitude, temperature and precipitation. Moreover, using a global data set on economic activity for all terrestrial grid cells from the Yale G-Econ project, we show that the link between UVB-R and economic development survives the inclusion of country fixed effect

Roman Roads to Prosperity: Persistence and Non-Persistence of Public Goods Provision

How persistent is public goods provision in a comparative perspective? We explore the link between infrastructure investments made during antiquity and the presence of infrastructure today, as well as the link between early infrastructure and economic activity both in the past and in the present, across the entire area under dominion of the Roman Empire at the zenith of its geographical extension (117 CE). We find a remarkable pattern of persistence showing that greater Roman road density goes along with (a) greater modern road density, (b) greater settlement for-mation in 500 CE, and (c) greater economic activity in 2010. Interestingly, however, the degree of persistence in road density and the link between early road density and contemporary economic development is weakened to the point of insignificance in areas where the use of wheeled vehicles was abandoned from the first millennium CE until the late modern period. Taken at face value, our results suggest that infrastructure may be one important channel through which persistence in comparative development comes about.JEL: H41; O4

Mitteilungen des URZ 1/2010

Informationen des Universitätsrechenzentrums mit Jahresrückblick 2009 zu den aktuellen Projekten und Diensten des URZ:Jahresrückblick 2009 Neue Technologie im Campus-Backbone - Virtual Switching System (VSS) Softwareausstattung der Ausbildungspools Kurzinformationen Software-New