Given the recent economic problems of southern EU countries that are rooted in lacking competitiveness, this task will summarise existing knowledge on the factors impeding on or facilitating the economic development of peripheral/low income regions in the EU, and discuss policy options to...

Unless labour force participation in Europe increases enormously in the coming decades, the current demographic dynamics will pose gigantic challenges to the sustainability of public finance. Migration (and thus migration policy) can thus be seen as a central topic which will remain on top of...

This paper uses a data set covering 9 EU15 member states and 7 candidate countries and new member states to compare inter-regional migration patterns in the 1990s. We find that the level of migration is lower in candidate countries and new member states than in EU15 member states. Also in...

We use individual level data covering 30 mostly post-communist and developing countries which account for over a fifth of the worldwide immigrant stock to assess the impact of risk aversion on the willingness to migrate. Consistent with theories of individual level migration decisions, risk...

The literature on international migration has repeatedly emphasized that the extent and structure of migration has an important impact on the competitiveness of regions and countries. This report provides an overview of the extent and the potential effects of high-skill migration to the EU27. It...

Die mittelfristige Prognose der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung und des strukturellen Wandels, der sektoralen Beschäftigungsveränderungen und der Nachfrage nach beruflichen Tätigkeiten, die das Österreichische Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung im Auftrag des AMS Österreich durchgeführt hat,...

We use synthetic control group methods to analyse the causal impact of CSR certification on the economic performance of a small set of Italian manufacturing firms that underwent SA8000 certification in 2009 or 2010. We find no evidence of a positive or negative impact of SA8000 certification on...

Homeownership is believed to cause higher unemployment. This is because homeowners face higher mobility costs that limit their job search to local labour markets. Empirical tests of this prediction have yielded mixed results so far, possibly due to the endogeneity of homeownership. This paper...

We analyse the impact of social capital on the willingness to migrate in 28 post-communist and five western European comparator countries using the Life in Transition Survey. We find substantially lower levels of professional social capital among the older cohorts in post-communist than in the...