The paper argues that economic integration causes problems for the labor market of high-wage countries due to cross-border labor mobility and the accompanying increase in labor supply. Empirical evidence is provided from an analysis of regional labor market effects of German re-unification. In...

Intergovernmental transfers can be either conditional or unconditional with regard to the autonomy of local governments in spending such financial means. Although fiscal decentralisation has recently been quite pronounced in Eastern European transition countries, the dominance of a purpose- and...

Eastern enlargement of the EU promises gains, but also imposes fiscal costs on incumbent countries. A sensitive issue concerns immigration, jobs and wages. We address these issues in a general equilibrium framework, both analytically and through numerical simulations. Analytical results identify...

The paper studies the role of international implications after EU enlargement. Based on a formal model with migration costs for both capital and labor, it predicts a two-sided migration from the new to the old EU countries which is later reversed. As the migration pattern chosen by market forces...

What determines whether or not multinational firms transplant the mode of organisation to other countries? We embed the theory of knowledge hierarchies in an industry equilibrium model of monopolistic competition to examine how the economic environment may affect the decision of multinational...

This paper reviews the economics approach to conflict and national borders. The paper (a) provides a summary of ideas and concepts from the economics literature on the size of nations; (b) illustrates them within a simple analytical framework where populations fight over borders and resources,...

This paper presents a general equilibrium model of conflict based on a world populated by representative democracies. At the individual state level, when information regarding a leader's ability to defend the state against unavoidable conflict is va luable to voters, an incumbent leader seeking...

On the basis of a single-period, guns-versus-butter, complete-information model in which two agents dispute control over an insecure portion of their combined output, we study the choice between a peace agreement that maintains the status quo without arming (or unarmed peace) and open conflict...

Better managers and managerial practices lead to better firm performance. Yet, little is known about what happens when managers move across firms. Does a firm hiring a good manager improve its performance? If yes is there some valuable knowledge the manager has acquired and successfully diffused...

We consider a dynamic setting in which two sovereign states with overlapping ownership claims on a resource/asset first arm and then choose whether to resolve their dispute violently through war or peacefully through settlement. Both approaches depend on the states' military capacities, but...