This paper shows that in the Baltic countries, commuting reduces urban- rural wage and employment disparities and increases national output. To quantify the effect of commuting on wage differentials, two sets of earnings functions are estimated (based on Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian Labor...

The persistence of disparities is one of the most striking features of regional development. We argue that movements of labour force, instead of being an always equilibrating mechanism, can also make persistent or even reinforce such inequalities. The most advanced regions are in fact generally...

This paper examines whether New Zealand residents move from low-growth to high-growth regions, using New Zealand census data from the past three inter-censal periods (covering 1986-2001). We focus on the relationship between employment growth and migration flows to gauge the strength of the...

The first of May 2004 marked an important date in the history of Europe as a political, geographic, and social entity. After years of negotiations, ten European countries joined the European Union, bringing in their potential and expectations, adding a total population of 75 million people and a...

Droughts, hurricanes and other environmental shocks punctuate the lives of poor and vulnerable populations in many parts of the world. The direct impacts can be horrific, but what are the longer-term effects of such shocks on households and their livelihoods? Under what circumstances, and for...

The current research emphasis on institutions as key determinants of economic performance, rather than on resources and resource productivity, has uncovered important questions for further research. For example, if institutions are central to economic performance, then what explains observed...

This paper analyzes the genericity of bifurcations of one-parameter families of smooth (C1) vector fields that are embedded in an underlying multi-dimensional parameter space. Bifurcations with crossing equilibrium loci are called 'split bifurcations.' They include, for example, the pitchfork...

Institutions either promote or constrain economic performance, but which parts of institutions advance or restrict performance, and why do economies sharing similar institutions sometimes perform differently? This paper is a modest attempt at addressing a small part of these questions. It...

This research exploits a large employer-level panel dataset in order to analyse employment and worker flows for all establishments in a highly industrialized region in the North- East of Italy, the Veneto. Our results have relevance for models of job creation, job destruction and labour excess...

: During the last couple of decades, the migratory movements in Chile have been minimum, regions are far from achieving match in the per capíta income, situation that would give persistence to the regional inequity. According to studies, in 52 years, half of the gap between a rich and a poor...