There is a large and successful literature exploiting the division and re-unification of Germany as a natural experiment for analysing the effects of political regimes on economic behaviour. This paper contributes to this literature by reassessing the role of legacy effects of socialist labour...

There is a successful and growing number of studies published in top-economics journals that exploit the division and re-unification of Germany as a natural experiment for analysing the effects of political regimes on economic behaviour. One strand of the literature shows that socialism shaped...

Socio-economic interrelationships among regions can be measured in terms of economic flows, migration, or physical geographically-based measures, such as distance or length of shared areal unit boundaries. In general, proximity and openness tend to favour a similar economic performance among...

The relationship between the labor force participation and the business cycle has become a topic in the economic literature. However, few studies have considered whether the cyclical sensitivity of the labor force participation is influenced by "social effects". In this paper, we construct a...

Regional labor markets are characterized by huge disparities of unemployment rates. Models of the New Economic Geography explain how disparities of regional goods markets endogenously arise but usually assume full employment. This paper discusses regional unemployment disparities by introducing...

Economic regions, such as urban agglomerations, face external demand and price shocks that produce income risk. Workers in large and diversified agglomerations may benefit from reduced wage volatility, while firms may outsource the production of intermediate goods and realize benefits from...

Economic regions, such as urban agglomerations, face external demand and price shocks that produce income risk. Workers in large and diversified agglomerations may benefit from reduced wage volatility, while firms may outsource the production of intermediate goods and realize benefits from...

Regional labor markets are characterized by huge disparities of unemployment rates.Models of the New Economic Geography explain how disparities of regional goods markets endogenously arise but usually assume full employment. This paper discusses regional unemployment disparities by introducing a...

Regional labor markets are characterized by huge disparities. The literature on the wage curve argues that there exists a negative relationship between unemployment and wages. However, this literature cannot explain how disparities of these variables between regions endogenously arise. In...

The literature on the wage curve provides considerable evidence in favor of a negative relationship between unemployment and wages. It is thus often seen as a refutation of the Harris-Todaro model, who point to a positive relationship. This paper shows that both strands of literature are special...