An increase in legally binding severance payments creates both an incentive and a disincentive for workers to invest in firmspecific human capital. Which effect prevails on balance depends on the productivity of the worker's human capital investment. For strong positive reactions, increases in...

In standard models of New Economic Geography the overall regional price index in the centre is lower than in the periphery, because trade in manufacturing imposes transportation costs whereas trade in agriculture is assumed to be costless. Since real world observations suggest higher overall...

In this paper we analyze the political economics of different strategies to implement revenue neutral reforms of a complicated income tax system ('tax-cut-cum-base-broadening'). We set up a straightforward social choice model where individuals initially have two deduction possibilities from the...

Standard models of the new trade and location theories usually assume full employment and are thus ill-equipped to study spatial unemployment differences, which in reality are more pronounced that income disparities. Regional labour market theories like the ´wage curve´-approach on the other...