This study proposes new family-centered measures of access to early care and education (ECE) services with respect to quantity, cost, and quality and uses them to assess disparities in access across locations and socio-demographic groups in Minnesota. These measures are distance-based and use...

Place-based attachments are important but often overlooked. Place-based attachments can be beneficial but often harm individuals tied to struggling areas. In this address, I discuss my own education and migration experiences and then more generally discuss sense of belonging as a friction to...

From a theoretical perspective the link between the speed and scope of rapid labor reallocation and productivity growth or income inequality is ambiguous. Do reallocations with more flows tend to produce higher productivity growth? Does such a link appear at the expense of higher income...

Using the currency demand and DYMIMIC approaches estimates are presented about the size of the shadow economy in 22 Transition and 21 OECD countries. Over 2001/2002 in 21 OECD countries is the average size of the shadow economy (in percent of official GDP) 16.7% of "official" GDP and of 22...

We use national labor force surveys from 1983 through 2011 to construct hours worked per person on the aggregate level and for different demographic groups for 18 European countries and the US. We find that Europeans work 19% fewer hours than US citizens. Differences in weeks worked and in the...

Over the last two decades, trade union membership in Central and Eastern Europe has been in continuous decline and there is a common perception that trade unions in the region are weak. However, little is known about the actual relevance of trade unions for individual workers in the...

This paper investigates the labour market and welfare changes experienced by enlarged-EU migrants before and after 2007. For this purpose, we briefly review the Spanish socio-economic institutional background, as well as its migration policy towards enlarged-EU citizens. Then we discuss the...

We examine the effect of joining the European Union on individual life satisfaction in Bulgaria and Romania in the context of the 2007 EU enlargement. Although EU membership is among the most important events in Bulgaria and Romania's modern histories, there is no evidence on how it affected the...

After the collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, former party members were particularly likely to start businesses and become entrepreneurs. However, it remains unclear whether this entrepreneurial activity was driven by the resources, information and opportunities provided by...

In this paper we determine the industry 4.0 (I4.0) readiness of eight Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs): Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia. We outline the nature of manufacturing in the region, describe three distinct...