This paper examines the effects of preschool expansion in Kalamazoo County on the county’s economic development. Effects on the county’s economic development are defined as effects on the employment and earnings of county residents. The estimated effects are found to be large relative to the...

In this paper, a multilevel analysis is applied to the OECD-PISA2006 data with the aim to compare factors affecting students’ achievement across Italy and Spain. The findings show that both countries are affected by strong internal regional heterogeneity, where some regions have achievement...

This paper examines how local-level policies can strengthen entrepreneurship and innovation in the region of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough in the United Kingdom. It investigates the quality of the local entrepreneurship ecosystem for generating innovative start-ups and scale-ups and the...

The North-South problem is far from settled, and it is high time to look into the reasons why this dualism shows such extraordinary persistence. No longer having devaluation to fall back on, years have been wasted in the unsuccessful attempt to exorcise the spectre of decline with rhetoric about...

This working paper provides a conceptual framework for measuring the attractiveness of OECD regions. First, it presents the imperative for rethinking regional attractiveness in the context of global shocks and trends and their regionalised consequences and opportunities. Then, it presents a new...

Ten years ago, a devastating earthquake, tsunamis and nuclear accident in Japan took thousands of lives and affected millions of people. This unprecedented disaster generated numerous lessons for policymakers in Japan and around the world on how to prepare, respond to and recover from shocks,...

In the less developed regions of Italy, the so-called Mezzogiorno, the level of human capital is lower compared to the advanced regions od the Centre-North. We use a Computable General Equilibrium (Cge) Model to show that an increase in the demand and supply of skilled labor in the human...

China has made impressive strides in education in recent decades, even though the accumulation of human capital has lagged behind that of physical capital. Going forward, access to and quality of education will be key to sustain economic convergence with the most advanced economies and to offset...

A highly skilled workforce is crucial to sustain competitiveness and contain the rise in income inequality. Recent surveys of adult skills and educational performance suggest that younger cohorts are doing less well than their predecessors. Many immigrants struggle both in school and in the...

Economists once believed firms do not pay to develop occupational skills that workers could use in other, often competing, firms. Researchers now recognize that most firms benefit from investing in apprenticeship training. Evidence indicates that financial returns to firms vary. Some recoup...