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We examine the dynamic short and long-run relationship between urbanisation, industrialisation, energy intensity, per capita GDP, and CO2 emissions in South Africa from 1970 to 2016. The Autoregressive Distributed Bounds Testing Approach (ARDL) is employed to calculate short-run and long-run relationships in the presence of structural breaks and the vector error correction model is applied to determine the direction of causality. The bounds tests suggest that the five variables are bound together in the long run when CO2 emission is the dependent variable and that urbanisation has the largest impact on CO2 emissions. Granger causality tests show a strong bidirectional causality among all the variables, with the exception of GDP and energy intensity where there is a strong unidirectional relationship running from energy intensity to GDP per capita. Our findings suggest that policymakers must develop comprehensive policies for mitigating CO2 emissions, particularly those that focus on managing rapid urbanisation.

Rural and urban regions are interconnected and form one system. Changes in one region therefore also affect others. This is particularly true for a force as large and pervasive as urbanization which resulted in massive rural and urban economic restructuring and geographic realignment of rural–urban boundaries. Until the mid-twentieth century, rural could be considered the opposite of urban, but in the process of urbanization, economic and social structures of rural and urban regions became more similar. However, perceptions and attitudes often survive long after conditions that shaped them have changed. In this article, the authors explain why attention to proper definitions of rural and urban is important to policymaking and analysis. The authors use ideas, definitions, and empirical results based in large part on A. M. Isserman’s research to highlight the importance of his rural research and to honor his memory.

This study tests the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, using a panel co-integration approach. Country-level time series data of energy consumption and economic growth are pooled and used to estimate the model. Sub-Saharan African countries in the sample are classified into low income and middle income countries. The findings support the neutrality hypothesis in the short-run, except for middle income countries, and a strong causation running in both directions is found in the long-run. The different results for low and middle income countries provide evidence of the importance of income level in the causal relationship. This study helps to explain the interdependence of energy consumption and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. Results are critical in formulating sustainable development policies that are geared to the efficient allocation of resources which are expected to increase access to energy services in the study region.

Undocumented migration is a (inferior) substitute to documented migration. Hence, policies affecting documented migration also affect undocumented migration. This paper explores this relationship from a theoretical perspective. The implications of this exploration are that lax enforcement of visa rules and national borders, combined with a very long waiting line (small annual quotas) for immigrant visas, can make illegal immigration a preferred option over legal immigration or, more generally, that for policy purposes all types of migrations should be regarded as interdependent. Therefore, policies aimed solely at, say, undocumented immigration will generally be less effective than an integrated policy approach.

Amenities are expected to impact regional economic growth by affecting growth in population, employment, income, and house values. This study assesses whether the 299 counties in the Northeast (NE) region of the US can build and pursue a growth strategy that depends on their local and neighborhood amenities (natural and built). It extends previous studies by estimating a simultaneous spatial Durbin model (SDM) using the two stages least square method. Historical and cultural amenities and water based recreational amenities are found to play a positive role in shaping the growth of population in the northeast region of the US. The role of natural amenities, land and winter based amenities is found to be negative or insignificant. One of the important findings of the study is the positive role of surrounding counties’ historical and cultural amenities in the growth of population and employment densities. Overall there is no evidence of a consistent and strong relationship between amenities and regional economic growth, and the results can be termed “mixed and inconclusive”.

This annotated bibliography is a work in progress to collect and organize studies that use quasi-experimental methods. The literature contained here represents a spectrum of methods of selecting a control group and impact assessment. When available, an abstract of the article is included. RRI expects to continue to update this bibliography.

The objective of this chapter is to highlight the role played by governance in GDP growth and changes in telephone density in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. The contribution of these two factors to aggregate output and telephone density is examined using the dynamic system GMM estimation that accounts for the endogeneity of GDP and telephone density. GMM estimations reveal that government effectiveness is positively associated with GDP growth, while political stability has a negative effect on telecommunications penetration. In addition, the estimations indicate that changes in telephone density have a positive effect on GDP growth. From a policy standpoint, the empirical model results suggest that telecommunications infrastructure-driven growth can be augmented if telecommunications infrastructure investment can generate a multiplier effect through job creation, both directly related and indirectly related to telecommunication infrastructure.

This study focuses on testing the relationship between income inequality and growth within U.S. counties, and the channels through which such effects are observed. The study tests three hypotheses: (1) income inequality has an inverse relationship with growth; (2) regional growth adjustments are the channels through which the inequality and growth are equilibrated; and (3) income inequality is endogenous to regional growth and its adjustment. Results, based on a system of equations estimation, confirm the hypotheses that income inequality has a growth dampening effect; income inequality is endogenous to regional growth and growth adjustment; and the channels through which income inequality determines growth are regional growth adjustments, such as migration and regional adjustment in job and income growth. Results have numerous policy implications: (1) to the extent that income inequality is endogenous, its equilibrium level can be internally determined within a regional growth process; (2) to the extent that traditional income inequality mitigating policies have indirect effect on overall regional growth, they may have unintended indirect effects on income inequality; and (3) to the extent that regional growth adjustment also equilibrates income inequality, such forces can be utilized as policy instruments to mitigate income inequality, and its growth dampening effects hence forth.