In this paper, a set of neural network (NN) models is developed to compute short-term forecasts of regional employment patterns in Germany. NNs are modern statistical tools based on learning algorithms that are able to process large amounts of data. NNs are enjoying increasing interest in...

We investigate whether US households possess advance information about their future income and what this means for consumption insurance. Based on insights from a theoretical model, we propose a new test to detect advance information, which requires only panel data on consumption and income....

Unemployment rates appear to vary widely at a subregional (e.g., local or provincial) level. Using spatial econometric models for spatial autocorrelation, this paper focuses attention on the spatial structure of regional unemployment disparities of Italian provinces. On the basis of findings...

Why has job growth over the past decades been weaker in the Dutch Randstad area than in surrounding regions? In a simultaneous equations analysis, we find that employment adjusts to the regional supply of labour. Net internal migration is predominantly determined by regional housing supply and...

Policy makers spend large amounts of public resources on the foundation of science parks and other forms of geographically clustered business activities, in order to stimulate regional innovation. Underlying the relation between clusters and innovation is the assumption that co-located firms...

Existing indices measuring the spatial distribution of economic activity such as the Krugman Specialisation Index, the Hirschmann-Herfindahl index and the Ellison-Glaeser index typically do not take into account the spatial structure of the data. In this paper, we first consider traditional...

We investigate which countries have the highest potential to achieve entrepreneurial progress. This progress is defined using an entrepreneurial ladder with five successive steps: “never thought about starting a business”, “thinking about starting a business”, “taking steps to start a...

There is an increasing awareness of the potential of nonlinear modeling in regional science, which can partly be explained by the recognition of the limitations of conventional equilibrium models in complex situationsand partly by the easy availability and accessibility of sophisticated...

This paper investigates patterns of manufacturing location in the context of increased economic integration in Central and East European countries. Using regional data for the period 1990-1999, we identify and compare patterns and determinants of manufacturing location in five European Union...

This paper replicates Costa and Kahn's analysis of locational choices of couples of highly educated persons for the Netherlands. We find increasing concentration of such power couples in the urbanized western part of the country. This trend occurs in spite of the absence of an urban wage premium...