COVID-19 lockdowns have radically changed the working arrangements for millions of workers. But who are the workers best positioned to work from home? Drawing on data from the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), we show that workers possessing higher levels of skills are significantly more...

Knowledge-intensive services (KIS) are important activities for regional growth and considered to be located at the top of urban and regional hierarchies. However, the widespread use of information and communication technologies (ICT) may lead to a higher degree of decentralization. This paper...

During the 90s the increase in health spending which compared to the overall growth had taken place at a rather rapid pace experienced a worldwide slow-down. In relation to overall economic growth and the expansion of other countries' health care systems, Austria's system grew below average- a...

We use Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to evaluate the robustness of determinants of economic growth in a new dataset of 255 European regions in the 1995-2005 period. We use three different specifications based on (1) the cross-section of regions, (2) the cross-section of regions with country...

In this paper we put forward a Bayesian Model Averaging method dealing with model uncertainty in the presence of potential spatial autocorrelation. The method uses spatial filtering in order to account for different types of spatial links. We contribute to existing methods that handle spatial...

The findings of recent studies on adjustment processes suggest that regional labour markets in the EU and the US differ significantly. Low wage flexibility and limited labour mobility in European countries involve persistent unemployment differentials across regions. However, the spatial...

New Economic Geography (NEG) has reached a theoretical consolidation while related empirical tests are still scarce. The present paper aims at providing some evidence on the validity of forces emphasised by NEG. The analysis starts from the nominal wage equation derived from the Krugman...

A basic result of new economic geography (NEG) models is that the proximity to consumer markets impacts wages and employment within regions. The ongoing process of European integration, being targeted on the reduction of barriers to trade and factor mobility, has presumably changed relative...

EU enlargement is supposed to entail profound impact on the location of economic activities in Europe. Although there is concern about the implications of enlargement for regional disparities in the EU, corresponding empirical results are still rare. The objective of this analysis is to provide...