The general conditions for local authorities in Germany have changed fundamentally during the last decades. Not only do municipalities compete with each other for employment, prestige and competitive advantages, they also face increasingly higher demands by their citizens, for instance in the...

We depart from the trade and wages literature and its emphasis on North-South trade, examining North-North by developing the basic linkages between trade-based integration and relative wages in an Ethier-type division of labor model. Using this model we identify a formal relationship between...