In 2000, the Lisbon Agenda set out an ambitious plan to make the EuropeanUnion “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy inthe world”. The Agenda suggested a need for action on three broad fronts:the first explicitly macroeconomic; the second explicitly microeconomic;the third...

I analyze empirically the effects of both urban and industrial agglomeration on men’s andwomen’s search behavior and on the efficiency of matching. The analysis is based on the ItalianLabor Force Survey micro-data, which covers 520 randomly drawn Local Labor Market Areas(66 per cent of the...

In China urban residents have traditionally been protected against labour marketcompetition from rural-urban migrants. Over the period of urban economic reform, rural-urbanmigration was allowed to increase in order to fill the employment gap as growth of labourdemand outstripped that of the...

[...]In this paper, we argue that a major obstacle tohigher student achievement is a lack of good informationcomparing achievement levels to labor marketrequirements—the kind of information that can comethrough academic standards and assessments. Without this information, parents are unable to...

By assuming Cobb-Douglas production technology, many well-known imperfectlycompetitive macroeconomic models of the labour market (e.g. Layard, Nickell andJackman, 1991) imply that equilibrium unemployment is independent of the capitalstock. This paper introduces a new notion of capacity into the...

This paper provides a critical view of the cross country literature on the impact of labour market institutions and policies on the evolving pattern of unemployment in OECD countries. Such widely used indicators as the generosity of unemployment insurance or the strength of trade unions are...

Social capital is thought to play an economic role in the labour market. It may beparticularly pertinent in one that is in transition from an administered to a market-orientedsystem. One factor that may determine success in the underdeveloped Chinese labourmarket is thus guanxi, the Chinese...

I examine recent changes in labour markets and employment practices in Japan. I find little evidence that Japan is converging towards an Anglo-American type labour market. Mobility rates continue to be low, and there is little indication that this will change greatly in the future. Large firms...

This study provides statistical evidence that Russian rural/urban wages diverged substantiallyduring the industrialization of Russia in the late nineteenth century. However, over time boththe variation declined and integration somewhat increased as rural labor responded to newopportunities. The...

The paper constructs a picture of globalisation from workers’ perspective in a newlyindustrialising area in India. It brings together the insights of the spatial approach, whichfacilitates an integrated study that links various levels at which global capitalism operates,with an attention to...