This paper studies the causal effect of transport infrastructure on the spatial distribution of
economic activity within subnational regions across a large number of developing countries …

In a matched difference-in-differences setting, we show that China's expressway system
helps poor rural counties grow faster in GDP while slowing down growth in the rich rural …

This paper studies the effect of promotion incentive on county officials' GDP manipulation in
China, both theoretically and empirically. We employ satellite nightlight data to estimate a …

Technological progress is widely recognized as a fundamental driver of economic
development and structural transformation. Nevertheless, substantial variations in …

In this paper we study whether or not transportation infrastructure disrupts local monopsony
power in labor markets using an expansion of the national highway system in India. Using …

This paper provides causal evidence on how political parties can sway voters at scale in
nascent electoral democracies. We collect novel data on expressway construction by the …

A key input to quantitative evaluations of transport infrastructure projects is their impact on
transport costs. We propose a new method of estimating this impact relying on widely …

We study how political preferences shaped California's High-Speed Rail (CHSR), a large
transportation project approved by referendum in 2008. Across census tracts, support for the …

We document an unprecedented change in the size and the quality of China's transport-
infrastructure network between 2000 and 2013 based on hand-collected and digitized data …

Middlemen are ubiquitous in supply chains. In developing countries they help bring products
from remote communities to end markets but may exert strong market power. We study a …