Suchergebnisse

Abstract
This paper studies the performance of New Towns, i.e., planned large urban subcenters, as a central tool to accommodate the global rise in urbanisation. A spatial quantifiable general equilibrium framework suitable to study large-scale urban master plans is presented. The framework is then used to investigate the equilibrium effects of five New Towns developed in the 1970s in Paris' metropolitan area. By 2015, the development of New Towns appears to have increased metropolitan population (+18%), metropolitan GDP (+11%), and reduced average commuting times (-6.9%). The results obtained for Paris' metropolitan area are externally validated using a Difference-in-Differences approach on all 314 New Towns developed worldwide between 1992 and 2012.

Abstract
The goal of this paper is to study the electoral impact of crisis management policies. With this aim, we exploit a natural experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic in France to evaluate the effect of the lockdown on voting behaviour. In particular, the country has been divided in two areas, red and green, subject to a 'hard' and a 'soft' lockdown, respectively. To measure voting behaviour, before and after the policy, we rely on the 2020 French municipal elections: the first round took place before the introduction of the restrictions, while the second round was delayed after the end of the lockdown. We estimate a spatial regression-discontinuity-design model comparing electoral outcomes around the border of red and green areas both in the second round and between the two electoral rounds. The main results suggest that lockdown regulations significantly affected voting outcomes. First, in localities under a harder lockdown, the incumbent's vote share is higher. Second, voter turnout is larger where more stringent restrictions are adopted. These results suggest that lockdown policy mobilizes citizens and leads them to rally around the incumbent politicians.

This paper studies the equilibrium effects of local fiscal autonomy accounting for benefits from self-determination. It proposes a quantifiable structural equilibrium framework in which imperfectly mobile heterogeneous households sort themselves across jurisdictions under endogenous public good provision. We calibrate the framework to fit the economic and geographic characteristics of the Canton of Bern using household-level data. In particular, we exploit quasi-natural policy variation in voting rights to quantify benefits from self-determination, and employ machine learning methods to accurately represent the local political process. We find that restricting local fiscal autonomy decreases welfare for (almost) all households.