In this paper, we aim at investigating if the conventional wisdom, that an increase of competition linked to a decrease in the degree of product differentiation always reduces firms’ profits, remains true in a unionized duopoly model with labour decreasing returns. In this context, mixed...

This paper compares Cournot and Bertrand equilibria in a differentiated duopoly (with imperfect substitutes), total wage bill maximizing unions and labour decreasing returns. It is shown that the standard result, that equilibrium profits are always higher under Cournot, may be reversed even for...

This work aims to investigate if the conventional wisdom, that a decrease in the degree of product differentiation always reduces firms’ profits, remains true in a differentiated duopoly model with decentralized, or firm-specific, monopoly unions. It is shown that, provided that unions are...

Self-employment is often seen as an attractive alternative to wage employment, despite lower welfare protection, higher risks, and more required effort than in the latter. It is then important to investigate why individuals choose self-employment. In addition to potential earnings, other factors...

We estimate the costs of occupational mobility using a novel approach that relies on aggregate flows of workers across occupations rather than on wage data. The theoretical underpinnings for this approach are derived from a model of occupation choice that delivers a gravity equation linking...

Culture is more and more considered as an important driver of tourism. However, it is critical, for policymakers, to evaluate the potential returns from investments in culture and generally cultural offer, in particular in multiregion settings with a potentially inefficient distribution of...

Culture is gaining increasing importance in the modern tourism industry, and represents a significant force of attraction for tourists (both domestic and international). Cultural tourism allows destinations and regions to expand their customer base, diversify their offer, extend the stay of the...

In this paper, we have empirically assessed the evolution of European regions in terms of both employment and unemployment during the recent financial crisis and Global Recession. Our specific research questions were as follows: (i) has there been a reversal in employment and unemployment...

The Hodrick-Prescott (HP) method is a popular smoothing method for economic time series to get a smooth or long-term component of stationary series like growth rates. We show that the HP smoother can be viewed as a Bayesian linear model with a strong prior using differencing matrices for the...

The Hodrick-Prescott (HP) method is a popular smoothing method for economic time series to get a longterm component of stationary series like growth rates. The new extended HP smoothing model is applied to data-sets with an underlying metric and requires a Bayesian linear regression model with a...