We assess how changes in youth cohort sizes effect employment rates in German labour market regions. Replicating the conventional approach, we estimate that a percentage increase in the youth share reduces regional employment rates by −0.2%. We challenge the assumption that cohort size effects...

This paper studies the impact of economic inequality on political polarization. Using a unique dataset covering different measures of regional income inequality as well as federal and state election outcomes at the county level in Germany, we investigate whether inequality influences the share...

There is currently a massive methodological gap in the spatial analysis of the Circular Economy (CE) performance in general and in Germany particularly. The authors present a methodology to assess this performance in German regions. The methodology consists of 26 indicators in seven dimensions,...

This paper examines the influence of environmental factors on technical, cost, scale and revenue efficiency of German savings banks in 2001‐2005. Taking into account growing regional disparities in economic wealth and population size, it differentiates between declining and growing regions....

In a simple growth model we explore the current and future growth effects of the regional population structure. Regional GDP growth in 227 regions within six countries in central Europe is explored as how they depend on the young and old dependency ratio. The young dependency ratio (YDR) is...

The last decades saw a pronounced shift in innovation policy in Germany and many other countries towards increased funding of cooperative R&D. Over the last years, competitions between regional initiatives pushed this trend even further by adding a regional perspective, by increasing the scope...

The ongoing relationships between emigrants and their families, friends, and business contacts in their home countries can increase outbound and inbound crossborder travel, while cross-border tourism and business and study trips can trigger migration. New communication technologies, such as...

Public sector activities are often neglected in the economic approaches used to analyze the driving forces behind urban growth. The institutional status of a regional capital is a crucial aspect of public sector activities. This paper reports on a quasi-natural experiment on county towns in East...

The role of geographical proximity in fostering connections and knowledge flows between innovative actors ranks among the most controversial themes in the research of innovation systems, regional networks and new economic geography. While there is ample empirical evidence on the constituent...

Public sector activities are often neglected in the economic approaches used to analyze the driving forces behind urban growth. The institutional status of a regional capital is a crucial aspect of public sector activities. This paper reports on a quasi-natural experiment on county towns in East...