Since the introduction of its "open door" policy in the late 1970s, China has been attracting a growing share of FDI inflows and its international trade integration has advanced considerably. In this study, we take a closer look at the regional growth impact of the Chinese internationalization...

This paper quantifies the causal effects of various types of investments in the road and railroad networks on economic growth in Chinese cities and regions. We separate out the influences of changes in access to markets that have come through better inter-regional and international transport...

Public sector activities are often neglected in economic approaches to analyze the driving forces of urban growth and changes in urban hierarchies. One crucial aspect of public sector activities is the institutional status of cities as regional capital. The paper is reporting on a quasi natural...

China?s pension system is in need of comprehensive reform in that it is fragmented in its coverage and significantly under-funded. Attempts to improve the coverage will likely exacerbate the financial strains. Thus it is urgent to improve the financial sustainability of the system and one policy...

Reservation wages indicate the wage threshold for which individual workers are inclined to supply their working capacity. In important theoretical approaches it is assumed that this threshold depends on the unemployment rate. If this is true, the variation of reservation wages might be an...

The aim of the paper is to analyze the development of the Estonian credit and saving market, especially considering the sector of households and non-financial corporations, in order to reveal the potential of saving and loan association (SLA) to enhance the economic and social development...

Using a panel data model, we study the effects of regional and industry-level traits on new business formation (NBF) for 164 industries across 266 Chinese prefectures between 1998 and 2007. The objective is to provide empirical estimates on effects of prefecture traits on entry rates, and in...

Empirical research on agglomeration and regional economic growth puts high emphasis on the impact of specialization, diversity, and competition on regional employment dynamics (Glaeser et al. 1992, Henderson et al. 1995, Blien et al. 2006, Fuchs 2009). However, Beugelsdijk (2006) and Raspe/van...

The abolishment of passport and any other type of border controls at the German-Polish and German-Czech border in December 2007 provoked public concerns that open border would increase cross-border crime. Despite these widespread concerns, there is still little research on whether the public...