Unterschiede in den regionalen Arbeitsmarktbedingungen prägen Deutschland seit längerem, besonders zwischen dem östlichen und dem westlichen Landesteil. Üblicherweise postulieren neoklassische Modelle, dass die Mobilität der Arbeitskräfte zur Angleichung regionaler Bedingungen führt. Im...

We start referring to the striking phenomena that over the past decades commuting distances in Germany have steadily risen, although commuting costs increased over-proportionally. This is surprising, as urban economic theory predicts increasing commuting distances especially for higher income,...

Economic debate about the consequences of immigration in Germany has largely focused on the wage effects for natives at an aggregate level. Especially the role of imperfect substitutability of migrants and natives gained importance. A new topic is to focus on the firm level by estimating...

Empirical evidence for the US shows that migrants increase the productivity of regions. To explain the impact of migrants on the average firm productivity we construct a general equilibrium model with monopolistic competition a la Melitz (2003). We consider heterogeneous firms with different...