We exploit regional differences in labour market density to conduct a simple empirical test of dynamic monopoly and selection wage theories. According to selection wage theories employers offer above-average wages in order to attract more applicants. This allows them to be choosier and to select...

We demonstrate that almost one half of the observed wage gap between East and West Germany reflects differences in worker, establishment, and regional characteristics rather than differences in productivity at the establishment level. Regional price and establishment size differentials alone...

Multinational firms transfer to their foreign affiliates superior technology, leading to higher productivity of their workers and therefore to higher wages, or so the often cited rent-sharing theory of multinational firms explains. But studies have shown that oftentimes, this results not from...

The issue of regional wage differentials is relevant both for policy proposes and general public discussion. A sound knowledge of the distribution of wage inequalities and their causes is essential for defining policy measures for reducing spatial income inequalities. A range of empirical...

We employ the German social security register data to analyze the development of wage inequality among foreigners in Germany. The data show a sharp increase of wage inequality which exceeds the size observed for natives. The decomposition methods proposed by DiNardo et al. (1996) are employed to...

The study of disparities in the equilibrium of regional labor markets is crucial in a developing country as Brazil, where personal and regional inequalities are extremely pronounced, even with the recent efforts to alleviate them. Following the recent literature on the determinants of...

This paper analyse how previous experience and affiliation influence individual employees but also the current employers. Knowledge can be embodied in several different forms, in individuals, in books, in machines, or in processes. Human capital refers to embodied knowledge in individuals,...

Income levels are higher in cities. The evidence for the income gap between urban and rural areas is overwhelming, but the agglomeration effect is hard to identify. Recent advances make use of individual level data to separate out sorting and instrumentation to handle the endogeneity of...

This research claims that investing European Union (EU) Structural Funds in Learning Mobility (LM) might lead to further regional polarization. LM is a type of labour mobility finalized to acquire new knowledge (human capital) and social networks (social capital). Historically, LM has been...

Stylized facts show that migrants more often face overqualified employment than natives. As shown by previous research, one third of the employed foreign born with tertiary education in the EU-15 are overqualified, with levels reaching up to 57.6%, compared to 20.9% among natives. Among the...