20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall there is still a strong division between the economies and labour markets of eastern and western Germany. In the last few years, however, unemployment has been reduced especially in the East, even in times of economic crisis. Within eastern Germany a...

We analyze the effects of the expansions of the European Union on inequality over the period 1960-2005 using an approach based on individuals' lifecycle incomes. This allows us to estimate permanent incomes and consider the effect of both survival rates and different rates of economic growth....

Unemployment in Europe has reached 10% as this Abstract was prepared, and it is over 10% in the United States at the same time. How has the service economy been related to the current global recession? That is the focus of this paper. Much has been written about the impact of the structural...

Abstract: Previous examinations of the literature suggests that high-growth firms (HGFs) exist in all or most industries, are not overrepresented in high-tech, and if anything appear to be slightly overrepresented in services. In an updated overview, we find that more recent studies, employing...

This paper lies in the tradition of decomposition analysis of wage differentials based on the model set forth in Blinder (1973) and Oaxaca (1973), and aims to measure labour market discrimination against Roma in South East European countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo). We...

Population changes are decisive for growth performances. This has been shown in a number of country studies, using time series data. The analysis is here extended in two dimensions: 1) the importance of demographics for growth is taking in to account a regional dimension allowing for spatial...

The debate over Growth, regional disparities and social inequalities within the European Union (EU) has originated much attention amongst academics and policy makers. This is only so, as there is a clear causal relationship between these and quality of life in general. Public intervention, which...

In the process of European integration, regions close to a border are especially affected by labour market liberalisation. Using data from the IAB employment subsample (IABS) and the employment register (BeH) for the period before and after the opening of the border (1980-2001) I shed light on...

This paper proposes a fixed-effect panel methodology that enables us to simultaneously take into account both TFP convergence and the traditional neoclassical-type of convergence. We analyse a sample of 199 European regions between 1985 and 2006 and find the absence of an overall process of TFP...

Recently, urban-rural linkages have been increasingly gaining momentum in the economic development and poverty alleviation in urban and rural areas. However, flows of people, goods, capital and information between urban and rural areas can be beneficial or detrimental to either urban or rural...