This paper addresses the intra-regional trade of the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), namely, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. We have found that the intra-regional trade is still at a modest level, where the trade intensity index showed...

International competitiveness is often regarded as crucial for the attainment of gains from trade, which may lead policy makers to subsidize exports. This view is based on confusion between the concepts of competitive and comparative advantage. The paper argues that when comparative advantage is...

International competitiveness is often regarded as crucial for the attainment of gains from trade, which may lead policy makers to subsidize exports. This view is based on confusion between the concepts of competitive and comparative advantage. The paper argues that when comparative advantage is...

In this paper we analyze the role played by Market access to explain income disparities among Japanese Prefectures for different periods of time. The results of the estimations suggest that 1) Market access plays an important role in the explanation of income disparities in Japan, 2) the effect...

Using a gravity model, this article presents an analysis of aggregate trade flows aimed at identifying China’s impact on Latin America’s trade. The results obtained indicate that: i) China´s growth in the last years implied a growing supply of exports to this market from most countries in...

This paper develops and tests a mechanism by which job security affects the age-composition of employment. This mechanism is based on the relative costs of dismissing young versus older workers resulting from job security provisions that are related to tenure. Using 39 consecutive annual...

This study examines the relationships between the employment and foreign direct investment (FDI) in Malaysia. The Malaysian government continues to put efforts in attracting more FDI inflows as it seems that FDI plays a major role in the economic development of Malaysia. Besides, there is...

Spain and Ireland might seem at first to feature very different labour markets, which go from very tight to very flexible labour conditions. Our analysis, however, goes beyond this simplistic argument and brings to light some important similarities. For this purpose, we estimate a dynamic...

The way age-specific unemployment rates fluctuate over the business cycle differs significantly across countries. This paper examines the effect of labor-market institutions on the fluctuations of age-specific unemployment rates based on panel data of 18 OECD countries between 1971 and 2008....

While there is a fairly broad consensus regarding the potential adverse effects of generous unemployment benefit insurance on steady-state employment, the short-term effects of benefit reforms are not well-established. This paper contributes to fill this gap by estimating impulse responses to...