We investigate the effectiveness of European Structural Funds on employment, population and house prices in Local Labor Markets (LLM) located in Southern Italy. We exploit the variability in disbursements between 2007 and 2013 and estimate the impact of the interventions by allowing for...

Empirical research on agglomeration and regional economic growth puts high emphasis on the impact of specialization, diversity, and competition on regional employment dynamics (Glaeser et al. 1992, Henderson et al. 1995, Blien et al. 2006, Fuchs 2009). However, Beugelsdijk (2006) and Raspe/van...

This paper studies the effects of investment tax credits on firms' input choices by exploitinga sudden shift in the tax credit rate by firm size for manufacturing firms in Germany in 1999. I find that more generous tax credits lead to a significant increase in both investment and employment,...

There is widespread concern that major cities and their inhabitants are highly vulnerable to transit strikes. Governments in many countries have addressed this concern by limiting the right of transit workers to strike. Whether or not this can be justified depends, in turn, on whether strikes by...

A whistleblower decides to reveal wrongdoings, having in mind the identity and labour legal protection and the corresponding legal praxis, either using the public or anonimous reporting. Confidentiality is based on rules that whistleblowers personal data are available to authorised subjects...

We investigate a moral hazard model with a one-sided commitment problem. That is, after effort provision, the agent is free to either stay with the principal or to leave and pursue his (ex-post) outside option, the value of which is increasing in effort. Depending on parameters, optimal...

We analyze the effects of personal characteristics of 4239 political candidates on their performance in local elections in Germany. Our results show that a candidate's occupation plays a decisive role. Occupational effects can be explained by (a) an occupation's public reputation and (b) public...

We study whether the option to naturalize improves social and cultural integration of immigrants in the host country. The empirical analysis relies on two immigration reforms in Germany, a country with a traditionally weak record of immigrant integration both in terms of labor market performance...

A highly segmented labor market usually favors a mismatch between supply and demand, significantly limiting the functional flexibility and the resilience of this market to macroeconomic shocks. From this perspective, such a market hampers the transition of an EU member to the euro zone,...

In Spain the rate of youth unemployment has exponentially increased in the past few years, and it has turned into a structural problem. When the fourth quarter of 2014 ended, the destruction of employment, which begun along with the economic and financial crisis in 2008, has specially affected...