This paper examines an economic union where oligopolistic firms produce by skilled and unskilled labor and do in-house R&D by skilled labor. The planner of the union accepts new members to the union, regulates the labor market through a minimum wage for unskilled labor and supports firms by...

We examine a common market which expands by integrating new regions. Capitalists are strategically interdependent through the goods market and they improve their productivity through R&D. Production and R&D employ unionized workers. The purpose of integration is to maximize a weighed average of...

This paper examines an economy with a large number of industries, each producing a different good. Technological change follows a Poisson process where firms improve their productivity through investment in R&D. The less there are firms in the economy or the more they can coordinate their...

The effects of competition on growth are analyzed in the recent literature by comparing economies with the same market structure but different degrees of substitutability. In this note, we show that in a general equilibrium model with monopolistic competition à la Dixit- Stiglitz the effect of...

One of the predictions of the insider-outsider theory is that wages will be higher in sectors (firms) with high labor adjustment costs/high turnover costs. This prediction is tested empirically in this study, using an insider-outsider model and a longitudinal panel of large firms in Portugal....

Anecdotal, empirical, and experimental evidence suggests that offering extrinsic rewards for certain activities can reduce people's willingness to engage in those activities voluntarily. We propose a simple rationale for this 'crowding out' phenomenon, using standard economic arguments. The...

This paper extends Hall's (1988) methodology to analyse imperfections in both the product and the labour market for firms in the Belgian manufacturing industry over the period 1988- 1995. We investigate the heterogeneity in price-cost mark-up and workers' bargaining power parameters among 18...

We often observe minority ethnic groups at a disadvantage relative to the majority. Why is this and what can be done about it? Efforts made to assimilate, and time, are two elements working to bring the minority into line with the majority. A third element, the degree to which the majority...

This paper uses the BEEPS firm-level data to study the process of convergence of transition countries with developed market economies. The primary focus of the study is on competition and market structure, finance and the structure of lending to firms, and how firms respond to the economic...

There is a well-established high quality literature on the role of networks, particularly ethnic networks, in international trade. Ethnic networks are a way of overcoming informal barriers (information costs, risk and uncertainty) to trade by building trust and substituting for the difficulty of...