Have new classicists invented market clearing or have they rehabilited it ? This is the question addressed in the present paper. It is generally agreed that market clearing underpins Walrasian theory, so my exploration is limited to the question of whether this is also true for Marshallian...

The notion of frictional unemployment first arose in the writings of Beveridge, Pigou and Hicks. Why did it fail at the time to grow into a fully fledged theory ? Our answer is simple. This failure was due to the fact these economists were unwilling and/or unable to go beyond the then-prevailing...

This paper provides a bird-eye overview of the history of spatial economic theory. It is organized around three main ideas (and authors): (i) land use and urban economics (Thünen), (ii) the nature of competition across space (Hotelling), and (iii) new economic geography and the emergence of...

An objective ranking of economics departments worldwide in terms of graduate education is derived. The central idea is that the value of a department is the sum of the values of its PhD graduates, as reflected in the values of their current employing departments. The scores are thus derived as...

We develop a theoretical framework that allows us to study which bilateral links and coalition structures are going to emerge at equilibrium. We define the notion of coalitional network to represent a network and a coalition structure, whre the network specifies the natyure of the relationship...

We propose a new concept, the pairwise farsightedly stable set, in order to predict which networks may be formed among farsighted players. A set of networks G is pairwise farsightedly stable (i) if all possible pairwise deviations from any network g E G to a network outside G are deterred by the...

Using a new data set that allows us to analyze precisely the research output in all fields of science, we show that the gap in scientific performance between Europe, especially continental Europe, and Anglo-Saxon countries, especially the USA, is large. We measure research quality by the number...

This paper aims at linking cross border mobility of students and graduates with the financing of higher education. Against the background of institutional features and empirical evidence of the European Union and Northern America, a theoretical framework is developed. This allows analyzing the...

OECD countries are concerned with strong male-female disparities in the labour market, in particular : with a wage gap in favour of men; with a strong gender occupational segmentation. Altough empirical studies suggest male-female difference in work attitudes have a part in these facts, this...

The Belgian population is ageing due to demographic changes; so does the workforce of firms active in the country. Such a trend is likely to remain for the foreseeable future. And it will be reinforced by the willingness of public authorities to expand employment among individuals aged 50 or...