Not only the colonial period, but also the pre-colonial times might have influenced later development patterns. In this study we assess a potential "pre-colonial legacy" hypothesis for the case of the Andean region. In order to analyze the hypothesis, we study the human capital of Inca Indios,...

I study the integration of regions in the form of a merger of populations, which I interpret as a revision of people's social space and their comparison set; I illustrate the way in which a merger can aggravate social distress; and I consider policy responses. Specifically, I view the merger of...

The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive description of the dependence pattern of stock returns by studying a range of quantiles of the conditional return distribution using quantile autoregression. This enables us in particular to study the behavior of extreme quantiles associated...

This paper tests the hypothesis of a beneficial brain drain using occupation-specific data on migration from developing countries to OECD countries around 2000. Distinguishing between several types of human capital allows to assess whether the impact of high-skilled south-north migration on...

We study how two distinct forms of globalisation, trade cost reductions and opening up of trade in previously shielded sectors, affect sector-specific wages, employment levels and aggregate welfare in a two-country model of general oligopolistic equilibrium (GOLE) with partly unionised labour...

If tax obligations are met, the balanced-budget substitution of an ad valorem tax on output for a specific tax not only raises a monopolist's production, but also represents a Pareto improvement. However, if tax avoidance or evasion is feasible and the marginal costs of such actions decline with...

We examine how electoral motives influence active labor market policies that promote job-creation. Such policies reduce unemployment statistics. Using German state data for the period 1985 to 2004, we show that election-motivated politicians pushed job-promotion schemes before elections.

We analyze the impact on a firm's profits and optimal wage rates, and on the distribution of workers' earnings, when workers compare their earnings with those of co-workers. We consider a low-productivity worker who receives lower wage earnings than a high-productivity worker. When the...

We develop a model to explain two-way migration of high-skilled individuals between countries that are similar in their economic characteristics. High-skilled migration is explained by a combination of two features: In both countries there is a continuum of workers with differing abilities,...

This paper considers a setting in which the acquisition of human capital entails a change of location in social space that causes individuals to revise their comparison groups. Skill levels are viewed as occupational groups, and moving up the skill ladder by acquiring additional human capital,...