Michiel Gerritse, assistant professor at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, presents his lastest works in an AQR Seminar.

The paper, coauthored with Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, analyses the spatial effect of public spending through government contracts on job creation and economic growth in US metropolitan areas. Based on administrative data covering the period 2005-2014, the authors show that the increase in contract spending per capita at the city level stimulates employment even controlling for reverse causality and spurious trends, whereas there is no clear causal effect of government contracting on aggregate GDP growth.