A usual interpretation of the high performance of the German economy since 2005 is that the Hartz labour market reforms have boosted German competitiveness, resulting in higher exports, higher production and lower unemployment. This explanation is at odds with the sequence of observed facts. We...

We show that the very characteristics of educational systems generate social segmentation. A stylised educational framework is constructed in which everyone receives a compulsory basic education and can subsequently choose between direct working, vocational studies and university. There is a...

Over the last 20 years, advanced economies have experienced an "unemployment versus inequality" tradeoff that is critically uneven across countries. To explain this, we propose an extended HOS model in which: the factors are skilled and unskilled labor; there is a continuum of goods; the world...

Over the last thirty years, both developed and developing countries have experienced a huge globalization of their economies, which has coincided with an increase in intra-country income inequality, both within and between skill groups. This article surveys the key mechanisms of the...

We review the economic literature on the impacts of the several dimensions of education upon intergenerational inequality persistency. It is firstly outlined that the critical increase in the population education level in all countries has not come with lower inequality. The basic tools of...

We review the theoretical and empirical economic literature upon income inequality in emerging countries. We firstly describe the main observed de velopments and show that these are rather diverse across countries and developing regions. We subsequently expose the main theoretical mechanisms. We...

Purpose – The paper seeks to analyse the impact of different public policies on inequality, unemployment, growth and the tax burden. Design/methodology/approach – A dynamic general equilibrium model is built, in which growth is driven by endogenous technical progress, to analyse the impacts...

We analyse the influence of North-South openness on technological change and on inequalities between skilled and unskilled workers in the advanced countries (the ?North?). A North-South model of endogenous growth based on technological knowledge is constructed and simulated according to...

In this paper we propose an explanation for the substantial migration inflows that occurred in North-Western Europe in the 1960s using a modified Heckscher-Ohlin model to show how migration inflows and the product specialisation pattern were linked to the skill premium of countries. In the...

We review the 'skill-biased technological change (SBTC) versus North-South trade (NST)' debate in order to explain widening wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. The traditional explanations based on exogenous SBTC and on the North-South Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson approach, as...