Most "wage curve" studies treat local labour markets as independent "islands" in the national economy. However, when a local labour market is in close proximity of other labour markets, a local shock that increases unemployment may not lead to lower pay rates if employers fear outward migration...

Most "wage curve" studies ignore the geography of local labor markets. However, when a local labor market is in close proximity of other labor markets, a local shock that increases unemployment may not lead to lower pay rates if employers fear outward migration of their workers. Hence, the...

Because of heterogeneity across regions, economic policy measures are increasingly targeted at the regional level. As a result, the need for economic forecasts at a sub-national level is rapidly increasing. The data available to compute regional forecasts is usually based on a pseudo-panel that...

Using a panel of 439 German regions we evaluate and compare the performance of various Neural Network (NN) models as forecasting tools for regional employment growth. Because of relevant differences in data availability between the former East and West Germany, the NN models are computed...

There is a growing interest in the academic and policy making communities in understanding the effects of sectoral specialisation on labour market performance. The existing empirical evidence, mainly based on US data, generally finds a positive correlation between sectoral specialisation and...

Because of heterogeneity across regions, economic policy measures are increasingly targeted at the regional level. As a result, the need for economic forecasts at a sub-national level is rapidly increasing. The data available to compute regional forecasts is usually based on a pseudo-panel that...

This paper develops a flexible multi-dimensional assessment method for the comparison of different statistical-econometric techniques based on learning mechanisms, with a view to analysing and forecasting regional labour markets. The aim of this paper is twofold. A first major objective is to...