"The author tests how the local economic structure-measured by a region's sector specialization, competition, and diversity-affects the technological growth of manufacturing sectors. Most of the empirical literature on this topic assumes that in the long run more productive regions will attract...

"The author analyzes regional labor market disparities in transition by presenting some data and summarizing existing literature. He finds that large and persistent regional labor market disparities developed in virtually all transition countries and that there is some evidence of polarization....

"There was substantial spatial variation in labor market outcomes in Brazil over the 1990s. In 2000, about one-fifth of workers lived in apparently economically stagnant municipios where real wages declined but employment increased faster than the national population growth rate. More than...