The paper investigates the productivity effects of national road infrastructure investment in Western Europe.The study makes use of newly available OECD/ECMT data showing a secular decline of productivity growth and of transport infrastructure investment. Infrastructure availability is modelled...

We discuss theoretical approaches to study the relationship between the size distribution of a nation's cities and macroeconomic growth. The discussion is based on the hypothesis of the New Growth Theory that inter-personal spillovers of education and skills determine the long-run growth of the...

We investigate the localization of technical knowledge in a setup where firms or researchers compete for the value of a preemptive innovation. All researchers could gain by sharing information due to the uncertainty of the arrival time of the discovery. As receiving information while withholding...

It is established that with the reduction of trade barriers the number of competitors on the spatial markets involved increases. This increase has short run consequences for price competition. If the trade liberalisation is anticipated by the domestic producers they will respond by changing the...

Skill-biased technical change is identified as the driving force behind the changing skill composition in OECD countries rather than structural change. The finding is partly the result of the sectoral view taken. This paper suggests a different view which uses the production process as a...