This paper investigates the feasibility of creating a common-currency union consisting of 16 countries in Southern Africa. We estimate an augmented-gravity model that includes public deficit, public debt, public expenditure, inflation, and the foreign reserves position. We also integrate...

We use data from online job postings listed on a job board to study how the demand for jobs linked to new technologies during the COVID-19 crisis responded to pandemic mitigation policies. We classify job postings into a standard occupation classification, using text analytics, and we group...

The global financial crisis and the subsequent uneven recovery have underscored the need for Africa's resilience to output and other shocks originated in the rest of the world. A comparison of two regional economic communities - the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern Africa Customs...

We investigate the impact of regional migration on average wages and on wage inequality in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA). We exploit unique data from a unified labour force household survey which covers natives and migrants in the seven economic capitals of the region. We...

We develop a new general equilibrium model of trade with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticities and endogenously determined wages. Trade integration favors wage convergence, intensifies competition, and forces the least efficient firms to leave the market, thereby affecting aggregate...

Even when international product market integration is taking place between fairly similar countries with low labour mobility, it may have important effects for labour markets by increasing the mobility of jobs. This creates both opportunities through exports and threats from imports. Is there...

We use Swedish register data to compare the employment and income of immigrants who intermarry natives versus those of immigrants who intramarry other immigrants in Sweden. We conduct the same analyses on three subsamples: labour migrants, refugees and family migrants. We find that intermarried...

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 studies the social desirability of agglomeration and the efficiency arguments for policy intervention in a simple, analytically solvable 'new economic geography' model with two trade integrating regions. The location pattern emerging as market equilibrium is bubbleshapedʺ, i.e. it...