In the last decade we have seen extensive international research on the extent to which wages of individuals respond to changing local labour market conditions. For many countries and periods, an inverse relationship between wages and unemployment rates has been found. Following Blanchflower and...

We develop a model of an economy with several regions, which differ in scale. Within each region, workers have to search for a job-type that matches their skill. They face a trade-off between match quality and the cost of extended search. This trade-off differs between regions, because search is...

This paper identifies the role of cultural diversity in explaining spatial disparities in wages and housing prices across Dutch cities, using unique individual panel data of home owners. We distinguish between the effects of interactions-based productivity, consumption amenities and sorting of...

It has been documented that the gender pay gap strongly increases after the birth of the first child. We focus on Denmark and show that gender differences regarding commuting play an important role in explaining this. We offer 3 pieces of evidence. First, the gender pay and commuting gaps come...

With China's 2001 WTO accession, trade costs between the US and China fell sharply, but the transport costs of Chinese imports within the US remained sizable. We argue that domestic transport costs shield local labor markets from globalization. Using a shift-share design for industry-level...

This paper identifies the role of cultural diversity in explaining spatial disparities in wages and housing prices across Dutch cities, using unique individual panel data of home owners. We distinguish between the effects of interactions-based productivity, consumption amenities and sorting of...

Structural funds are the most intensively used policy instrument by the EuropeanUnion to promote economic growth in its member states and to speed up the process ofconvergence. This paper empirically explores the effectiveness of European Structural Fundsby means of a panel data analysis for 13...

This paper studies the degree of integration of China's domestic market and investigates the determinants of inter-provincial trade barriers under the rubric endogenoustrade policy theory. I rely on industry-level trade flows extracted from provincial input-output tables to develop a model that...

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...

Knowledge drives the growth of nations and regions in a competitive space-economy. Hence, we would expect a strong correlation between investments in R&D, knowledge and learning processes, on the one hand, and productivity increases, on the other. However, the empirical evidence shows consistent...