This paper on Benin highlights poverty reduction and growth strategy. The National Development Plan (PND) is designed to specify the strategic benchmarks for development activities for the eight-year period until 2025, the target date for the implementation and completion of the Vision. The analysis suggests a low literacy rate, low performance levels in the education system and vulnerable public health situation due to insufficient public access to health services. Based on Benin’s comparative advantages with the ambitions enshrined in the Benin 2025 Alafia Vision, developments in international and regional trends, the chosen strategic option is to make agroindustry, tourism, and services the engine of inclusive, sustainable economic growth in a context of more effective national and local governance, based on the development of human capital and infrastructures. Sustainable management of the living conditions and the environment along with the emergence of regional development hubs require ensuring enforcement of legislative and regulatory texts.
I investigate the aggregate effects of R&D tax credits in the US. Because it subsidizes R&D activity and because credit rates vary between states, this policy has both spatial and dynamic effects on the economy. To address this issue, I construct an endogenous growth model with spatial heterogeneity and agglomeration spillovers in innovation. Aggregate outcomes in this model are thus affected by the spatial distribution of the population in the economy, which is itself endogenous and reacts to policy. I use this framework to identify a set of local R&D subsidies that maximize aggregate welfare.