This paper derives from a New Economic Geography model, and estimates, a quadratic sectoral real wage equation for the member countries of the enlarged EU. When significant, the real wages U-shaped curve is increasing and concave with respect to market access, but decreasing and convex with...

In this paper we address the question of the impact of permitting free migration in an enlarged trading bloc. We estimate two sectoral equations for trade flows and real wages of three regional blocs of the enlarged EU that we defined as North (wealthiest EU), South (Greece, Portugal and Spain)...

This paper builds a multi-sector, three country (centre and two peripheries), New Economic Geography model, where industrial sectors differ in the degree of scale economies and skill-intensity. The model incorporates, for the first time in this class of models, payments to the unemployed in each...

This paper is related to the literature on the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the labour market of host countries. Labour market literature has focused on the demand side of FDI; that is, increasing wage inequality by demanding more skilled workers or just increasing the overall...

If labor markets operated entirely frictionless, productivity premiums associated with different worker characteristics would equal the wage premiums earned by workers possessing those characteristics. Using matched employer-employee data from the manufacturing sector of three sub-Saharan...

How many immigrants with less than university education, for a given immigration quota, maximise economic output? The answer is zero in the canonical model of the labour market, where the marginal product of a university-educated immigrant is always higher. We build an alternative model in which...

This paper examines the empirical implications of technological changes for skill demand and wage inequality in Indonesia. According to the National Labor Force Survey of Indonesia, the share of educated workers and wage skill premium increased significantly over 2003-2009 for overall industry...

This paper establishes a causal link between the emigration of skilled workers and firm performance in source countries. Using firm-level panel data from ten Eastern European countries, we show that the emigration of skilled workers lowers firm total factor productivity. We exploit time,...

In this paper we estimate a sectoral gravity model for trade within a heterogeneous trade bloc, the enlarged EU, comprised of a high-income group (wealthiest EU), a middle-income group (Greece, Portugal and Spain), and a low-income group (acceding Central and Eastern European countries). The...

Many people in the European Union fear that Eastern Enlargement will lead to major job losses. More recently, these fears about job losses have extended to high skill labor and IT jobs. The paper examines with new firm level data whether these fears are justified for the two neighboring...