Abstract: | We are interested in the county governments role for the county seat economy. Our suggestion is this: Rather than discuss changes in county seat location at a given budget (representing a rare natural experiment), we should look at changes in county budget holding fixed county seat location (yielding a steady flow of observations). In the papers model changes in the county budget translate into changes in county seat employment. In the papers empirical test against a sample of German county seats we find it difficult to reject this.Received: February 2003, Accepted: Accepted May 2004JEL Classification: R53, H72, R23Kristof Dascher: I have benefitted from comments by three anonymous referees. I am also grateful for financial support from the CEPR research network on Foreign Direct Investment and the Multinational Organization, funded by the European Commission under contract number ERBFMRXCT980215. |