Contrary to the welfare magnet hypothesis, empirical evidence suggests that immigration decisions are not made on the basis of the relative generosity of the receiving nation's social benefits. Even when immigrants are found to use welfare more intensively than natives, the gap is mostly...

Several empirical studies find that worker inflows from more productive or otherwise superior firms increase hiring firms' productivity. We conduct a similar analysis for Germany, using a unique linked employer-employee data set, and ranking sending and hiring establishments by their median...

This paper analyzes the treatment of commuting expenses by the income tax code from a normative and a positive point of view within a continuous space framework with endogenous residence choices and perfect labor mobility. As commuting expenses should never be deductible from the income tax base...

This paper proposes the question whether or not traveling expenses to work should be deductible from the income tax base. In order to answer this question, a simple model of (im-) perfect household and worker mobility is employed. The focus of the analysis is on the efficient use of land and the...

The paper considers an unfunded linear pension system when workers make labor decisions more often than once in their life. To capture this feature, a three-period-overlapping-generations model is employed. On the one hand, the paper analyzes whether or not a Pay-as-you-go pension scheme is...

This paper studies Krugman's (1991) core-periphery model and extends it to include environmental pollution. We present the first analytic proof that only an even spreading of the firms over both of the two regions or a complete agglomeration of all manufacturing firms in one region are possible...

Do labor mobility, and co-worker networks contribute to convergence or divergence between regions? Based on the previous literature, labor mobility contributes to knowledge transfer between firms. Therefore, mobility may contribute to decreasing productivity differences, while limited mobility...