Should policymakers seek to increase jobs in particular local labor markets? Yes, but only if these policies are well targeted and designed. Encouraging job growth in distressed places can cause persistent gains in employment-to-population ratios. But our current place-based jobs policies, under...

Using a sample of the 48 mainland U.S. states for the period 1973-2009, we study the ability of U.S. states to expand own state employment through the use of state deficit policies. The analysis allows for the facts that U.S. states are part of a wider monetary and economic union with free...

Urbanisation in China has long been held back by various restrictions on land and internal migration but has taken off since the 1990s, as these impediments started to be gradually relaxed. People have moved in large numbers to richer cities, where productivity is higher and has increased...

Der demographische Wandel wird viele Bundesländer in Zukunft vor große wirtschaftspolitische Herausforderungen stellen, da die Abnahme der Erwerbsbevölkerung die wirtschaftliche Dynamik bremst. Dem Versuch, den Fachkräftebedarf durch verstärkte Ausbildung zu decken, sind wegen der hohen...

This paper examines how changes in state tax policy affect the number of federal estate tax returns filed in each state, utilizing data on federal estate tax return filings by state and wealth class for 18 years between 1965 and 1998. Controlling for state- and wealthclass specific fixed...

This paper studies how changes in welfare benefit levels affect welfare recipients’ residential choices. Although several empirical studies have stressed that welfare policy may affect residential choices of welfare recipients, few studies have simultaneously taken into account that...

A modified gravity model is estimated using a cross section of data drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau survey of 2000 in order to analyze the impact of economic freedom on gross migration flows among the lower 48 states. Spatial econometric methods are utilized in order to capture spatial effects...

This theoretical paper shows how a central government can induce a policy concerning a municipal matter through a package of a policy requirement and a grant. We find that, due to fiscal competition and the possibility for citizens to move between municipalities, the central government can make...

The Swedish system for inter-regional redistribution is examined from a political economy perspective and a growth perspective. A number of recent Swedish studies of this system are examined. Political economy concerns are found to be adequately represented in academic studies of this system,...

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the past four decades of empirical research on the relationship between internal migration and regional variation in the generosity of Canada’s unemployment insurance system. It has long been argued that because the Canadian insurance system is...