Na literatura econômica, há um grande interesse no estudo sobre a dinâmica do crescimento das cidades e os fatores que a influenciam. A motivação principal dos pesquisadores é verificar por que algumas cidades crescem enquanto outras permanecem estagnadas, e quais são os fatores que contribuem para o fluxo de migração de fatores de produção para os grandes centros urbanos. Neste sentido, o presente trabalho procura avaliar o impacto da infraestrutura pública sobre o crescimento econômico das cidades brasileiras - mensurado por meio do crescimento populacional e salarial. O acesso à infraestrutura é um dos principais fatores que determinam o desenvolvimento econômico e é considerado um dos maiores entraves para a o crescimento econômico do Brasil. Boa infraestrutura pode garantir serviços básicos, bem como externalidades positivas sobre a saúde, meio ambiente, produtividade e possibilidades de investimento. Os dados dos Censos Demográficos, utilizados nesta dissertação, mostraram que o país experimentou um forte crescimento no acesso à infraestrutura no período de 1970 a 2010. O acesso ao bastecimento de água, a coleta de esgoto, energia elétrica e a telefonia mais do que dobrou no período analisado. Tendo em vista que os municípios brasileiros são suscetíveis a diversas formas de interações entre si, é de se esperar que existam efeitos espaciais entre estes. Portanto, para analisar os impactos da infraestrutura sobre o crescimento econômico regional, foi utilizada a metodologia econométrica de dados em painel com dependência espacial. Como esperado, os resultados mostram que as variáveis de infraestrutura afetam positivamente o crescimento econômico regional, sendo o acesso à energia elétrica e a telefonia as variáveis com maior impacto. / In the economic literature there is a great interest in the study of the dynamics of the growth of cities and the factors that influence it. The main attraction of the researchers is to check why some cities grow while others remain stagnant, and what are the factors that contribute to the migration flow of production factors to the major urban centers. In this sense, this paper seeks to assess the impact of public infrastructure on economic growth of Brazilian cities - measured by population and wage growth. Since the access to infrastructure is one of the main factors determining economic development and is considered one of the greatest barriers to the economic growth in Brazil. Good infrastructure can guarantee basic services, as well as positive externalities in health, environment, productivity and possibilities for investment. Data from Demographic Censuses, used in this paper, showed that the country experienced strong growth in the access to infrastructure in the period of 1970-2010. The access to water supply, the sewage collection, electricity and telecommunications more than doubled during the period analyzed. In order to measure the effects of infrastructure on regional economic growth, we used the econometric analysis of panel data with spatial dependence, since the Brazilians\' municipalities are susceptible to diverse forms of interactions among them, is to be expected that exist spatial effects between them. As expected, the results show that the infrastructure variables positively affect the variation of income, being the access to electricity and telecommunications the variables with the greatest impact.

Esta dissertação investiga o impacto da aglomeração sobre o desempenho econômico dos Municípios Brasileiros entre 1970 e 2000. Para tanto, foram estimadas equações de crescimento combinadas com modelos econométricos espaciais. Os resultados indicam que a aglomeração teve efeito positivo sobre o crescimento econômico, sem indícios claros de congestionamento. Além disso, também foram encontrados sinais de externalidades positivas e spillovers de educação vindos de áreas vizinhas. Os resultados reforçam a necessidade de se considerar os efeitos espaciais quando se procura entender o desenvolvimento econômico no Brasil. / This paper investigates the impact of agglomeration economies on economic performance of Brazilian municipalities between 1970 and 2000. In order to achieve that, we estimate growth equations adopting standard spatial econometric models. The results indicate that agglomeration has positive impacts on economic development without clear indication of congestion effects. Moreover, we also found evidence of positive spatial externalities and educational spillovers coming from neighboring areas. The results reinforce the need for considering spatial effects when aiming to understand the economic development in Brazil.

Neste trabalho, utilizamos uma equação hedônica para estimar o preço implícito de amenidades urbanas a partir de dados do mercado de imóveis no Município de São Paulo. São testadas duas especificações: uma com as variáveis explicativas originais e outra com a construção de fatores para correção de multicolinearidade. Além de considerar a configuração monocêntrica tradicional, propomos a inclusão de um vetor de acessibilidade para o caso de uma cidade duocêntrica. A investigação sobre as variáveis ambientais relevantes é fundamentada na interpolação espacial dos resíduos. Concluímos que a proximidade das estações de trem, a presença de áreas verdes e o zoneamento estritamente residencial valorizam o imóvel para fins residenciais, enquanto a criminalidade reduz o seu valor. / In this work, I use a hedonic equation to estimate the implicit prices of urban amenities based on housing market data for the city of São Paulo. I test two different specifications, one with the original independent variables, and another with factors to correct for multicollinearity. In addition to the traditional monocentric model, I include an accessibility vector for a duocentric city. A criterion to select the appropriate environmental variables based on residual spatial interpolation is introduced. I conclude that proximity to train stations, green areas and strict residential zones raise rents, while criminality reduces them.

This thesis critically examines the geography of the growth in the private rented sector (PRS) in England, changing living arrangements and how living in the PRS affects feeling at ‘home’. It moves beyond the grand narratives and individual anecdotes of the ‘housing crisis’ to explain what it means, for whom and where. An integrated mixed methods approach using quantitative analysis of 2001 and 2011 census tables, 2011 Census microdata, the English Housing Survey 2010-11 (EHS) and qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews was combined to address the four key research questions:• How have tenure and household type changed nationally, regionally, at local authority and neighbourhood level between 2001 and 2011?• Who is moving into the PRS and why? What are the characteristics of households living in the PRS?• Do different household types in the PRS tend to live in particular neighbourhoods? What are the characteristics of these neighbourhoods and households?• How do people who live in the PRS feel at ‘home’?The growth of the PRS has led to spatial concentrations by household type and tenure in local authorities across England and changing living arrangements. This was particularly reflected by the concentration of other households with and without dependent children in London and some other areas. At neighbourhood level this revealed spatial polarisation by household type and tenure and the emergence of new urban landscapes caused by housing market constraints which were most likely to affect younger households and those who had migrated both from within and outside the UK. The EHS showed that the majority of newly formed households had moved into the PRS suggesting that it would continue to grow, the PRS was regarded as the least desirable tenure with the majority living in it planning to move, mostly into ownership, in the future and that the PRS led to high levels of relative poverty after housing costs exacerbated by higher fuel costs for some and poorer material conditions including higher levels of overcrowding, particularly for other households with dependent children, damp and cold. Despite these financial and material disadvantages there is evidence that households living in the PRS overcame tenancy constraints to enjoy the emotional, cognitive and social aspects of feeling at home and to engage in home improvement and home-making. As well as these substantive contributions to knowledge this thesis provided both methodological and policy contributions. The use of facet methodology provided critical insights from a number of different quantitative techniques that enabled the substantive contributions on the changing geography and demography of the PRS, residential decision making and feeling at home, and together the innovative of spatial econometric techniques to housing, into the emergence of new urban landscapes. The policy contributions are underpinned by the need to recognise the universal right to a home which: requires market interventions to rebalance landlord and tenant rights; provide a strong case to ensure that no household is forced to live in relative poverty after their housing and fuel costs have been taken into account; and that spatial planning needs to be based on a commitment to meet local housing needs and restrict the power of developers to deliver schemes that lead to gentrification, displacement and spatial exclusion.

This paper investigates the impact of knowledge capital stocks on total factor productivity through the lens of the knowledge capital model proposed by Griliches (1979), augmented with a spatially discounted cross-region knowledge spillover pool variable. The objective is to shift attention from firms and industries to regions and to estimate the impact of cross-region knowledge spillovers on total factor productivity (TFP) in Europe. The dependent variable is the region-level TFP, measured in terms of the superlative TFP index suggested by Caves, Christensen and Diewert (1982). This index describes how efficiently each region transforms physical capital and labour into output. The explanatory variables are internal and out-of-region stocks of knowledge, the latter capturing the contribution of cross-region knowledge spillovers. We construct patent stocks to proxy regional knowledge capital stocks for N=203 regions over the 1997- 2002 time period. In estimating the effects we implement a spatial panel data model that controls for the spatial autocorrelation due to neighbouring regions and the individual heterogeneity across regions. The findings provide a fairly remarkable confirmation of the role of knowledge capital contributing to productivity differences among regions, and add an important spatial dimension to the discussion, by showing that productivity effects of knowledge spillovers increase with geographic proximity. (authors' abstract)

This paper focuses on Austrian outbound foreign direct investment (FDI, measured by sales of Austrian affiliates abroad) in Europe over the period 2009-2013, using a spatial Durbin panel data model specification with fixed effects, and a spatial weight matrix based on the first-order contiguity relationship of the countries and normalised by its largest eigenvalue. Third-country effects essentially enter the empirical analysis in two major ways: first, by the endogenous spatial lag on FDI (measured by FDI into markets nearby the host country), and, second, by including an exogenous market potential variable that measures the size of markets nearby the FDI host country in terms of gross domestic product. The question whether the empirical result is compatible with horizontal, vertical, export-platform or complex vertical FDI then depends on the sign and significance levels of both the coefficient of the spatial lag on FDI and the direct impact estimate of the market potential variable. The paper yields robust results that provide significant empirical evidence for horizontal FDI as the main driver of Austrian outbound FDI in Europe. This result is strengthened by the indirect impact estimate of the mark et potential variable indicating that spatial spillovers do not matter. (authors' abstract)

Club-convergence analysis provides a more realistic and detailed picture about regional income growth than traditional convergence analysis. This paper presents a spatial econometric framework for club-convergence testing that relates the concept of club-convergence to the notion of spatial heterogeneity. The study provides evidence for the club-convergence hypothesis in cross-regional growth dynamics from a pan-European perspective. The conclusions are threefold. First, we reject the standard Barro-style regression model which underlies most empirical work on regional income convergence in favour of a two regime [club] alternative in which different regional economies obey different linear regressions when grouped by means of Getis and Ord's local clustering technique. Second, the results point to a heterogeneous pattern in the pan-European convergence process. Heterogeneity appears in both the convergence rate and the steady-state level. But, third, the study also reveals that spatial error dependence introduces an important bias in our perception of the club-convergence and shows that neglect of this bias would give rise to misleading conclusions.

This paper presents a theoretical growth model that accounts for technological interdependence among regions in a Mankiw-Romer-Weil world. The reasoning behind the theoretical work is that technological ideas cannot be fully appropriated by investors and these ideas may diffuse and increase the productivity of other firms. We link the diffusion of ideas to spatial proximity and allow for ideas to flow to nearby regional economies. Through the magic of solving for the reduced form of the theoretical model and the magic of spatial autoregressive processes, the simple dependence on a small number of neighbouring regions leads to a reduced form theoretical model and an associated empirical model where changes in a single region can potentially impact all other regions. This implies that conventional regression interpretations of the parameter estimates would be wrong. The proper way to interpret the model has to rely on matrices of partial derivatives of the dependent variable with respect to changes in the Mankiw-Romer-Weil variables, using scalar summary measures for reporting the estimates of the marginal impacts from the model. The summary impact measure estimates indicate that technological interdependence among European regions works through physical rather than human capital externalities.

The focus of this dissertation is local government expenditure, where growth, quality, and equality is in the center of attention Essay 1: Sports and Local Growth in Sweden: Is a Sports Team Good for Local Economic Growth? The purpose of Essay 1 is to analyzethe effect of professional sports on the municipality’s tax base. I find no indications of a positive effect on the growth rate of per capita income from having a team in the top series. Essay 2: Equality of Quality of Day Activity Service Programs in Sweden. In this Essay we investigates the equality of the day activity service programs for people with intellectual disabilities provided by local governments in Sweden. The findings are that despite the Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments intended to secure equality in living conditions, the quality of day activity service programs seems to be dependent on the local government’s tax base as well as the political preferences. In Essay 3: Analysis of Cost and Quality Indicators of Day Activity Service Programs in Sweden, we analyze the distribution of observable quality indicators for daily activity service programs. We find that municipalities that conduct regular user surveys find reasons to spend more per user on average. Additionally, the probability for transitions to employment at a regular workplace is higher in municipalities where as a routine a review is made of whether each participant can be offered an internship or work. The objective of Essay 4: The Composition of Local Government Expenditure and Growth: Empirical Evidence from Sweden, is to analyze whether there is a possibility of enhancing the average income growth rate at the local level by redistributing expenditure between main functional areas of local governments, while keeping the budget restriction fixed. We find that devoting large shares of expenditure on areas that increase labor supply, such as child care are positively related to growth in income. Additionally we find that spending areas previously categorized as productive can have a non-linier relationship with growth.

In this dissertation, I investigate how different aspects of the procurement process and evaluation affect bidding behavior. In essay 1, we attempt to map public procurements in Sweden by gathering a representative sample of procurements. We find that framework agreements and multiple-contract procurements represent a very large share of total government spending. The total value procured by government authorities, municipalities and counties accounts to 215 BSEK yearly, which we believe is an underestimate due to data issues. Essay 2 suggests a simple method for of estimating bidding costs in public procurement, and are empirically estimated to be approximately 2 percent of the procurement value using a comprehensive dataset and approximately 0.5 percent for a more homogeneous road re-pavement dataset. Our method provides reasonable estimates with, compared to other methods, relatively low data requirements. Essay 3 investigates the effect of quality evaluation on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Contrary to common belief, SMEs’ participation does not increase when evaluating quality, and their probability to win procurements decreases compared with that of large firms. In essay 4, the bidders’ decision to apply for a procurement review “appeal” is investigated. Contrary to procurers’ beliefs, evaluating quality is found not to have any statistically significant effect on the probability of appeals. Instead, I empirically confirm theoretical prediction of the 1st runner-up’s decision to claim the evaluation to be redone, as well as free-riding in appealing. In essay 5, we test whether spatial econometrics can be used to test for collusion in procurement data. We apply this method on a known cartel and test during and after the period the cartel was active. Our estimates support the proposition that spatial econometrics can be used to test for collusive behavior.