Workers participating in firm-sponsored training receive higher wages as a result. But given that firms pay the majority of costs for training, shouldn't they also benefit? Empirical evidence shows that this is in fact the case. Firm-sponsored training leads to higher productivity levels and...

This article shows how the impulses of the transformation process in eastern Germany have spread through the economy and the labour market. The form of transformation has long-term effects on the form of control over the economy; it is managed largely from western firms. This fact has manifold...

SMEs play an important role in the development of regional innovative systems because of their potential to accept new technologies and show fast growing rates. There is an interdependence between emergence of fast growing SMEs ('gazelles') and innovative development of regions. High level of...

Recently, the EU Council adopted a new labour migration policy instrument - the EU Blue Cards (BC) - for attracting the highly skilled workers to the EU. The present paper examines the potential impacts, which BC may cause on less developed sending countries (LDC). Our results suggest that the...

This paper revisits the role of the manufacturing sector during the middle-income stage. By exploiting a large dataset that covers internationally comparable sectoral information, we prove that the manufacturing sector is imbued with three important characteristics. First, for middle-income...