This paper develops a search model with heterogeneous workers and social networks. High ability workers are more productive and have a larger number of professional contacts. Firms have a choice between a high cost vacancy in the regular labour market and a low cost job opening in the referral...

We develop a modification of the connections model by Jackson and Wolinsky (1996) that takes into account negative externalities arising from the connectivity of direct and indirect neighbors, thus combining aspects of the connections model and the co-author model. We consider a general...

Effects of the competition between the two South locations (Mexico and China) in the Northern market (U.S.) is analyzed. By employing a new plant-level data set that covers the universe of Mexican export assembly plants (maquiladoras) from 1990 to 2006 and exploiting the exogenous acceleration...

In this paper we empirically study the relation between public debt and economic growth. We analyze how the public debt to GDP ratio at a certain point in time is correlated with the GDP growth rate in the following period, where we consider a one-year time span, a three-years time interval and...

This paper investigates firms’ optimal location choices explicitly accounting for the role of inwards and outwards knowledge spillovers in a dynamic Cournot oligopoly with firms that are heterogeneous in their ability to carry out cost-reducing R&D. Firms can either locate in an industrial...

This paper studies for the two major Iberian economies, Portugal and Spain, whether they pursue sustainable debt policies based on Bohn (1998)'s idea of a fiscal response mechanism. After presentation and discussion of theoretical reflections on the governmental budget, the empirical estimations...

We study the evolution of R&D networks in a Cournot model where rms may lower marginal costs due to bilateral R&D collaborations. Stochastically stable R&D networks exhibit the dominant group architecture, and, contrary to the existing literature, generically unique predictions about the size of...

In contexts such as education and sports, skill-accumulation of individuals over time crucially depends on the amount of training they receive, which is often allocated on the basis of repeated selection. We analyze optimal selection policies in a model of endogenous skill formation where, apart...

Using the dismantling of trade quotas on Chinese textile and clothing products in conjunction with China's accession to the WTO and an employer-employee matched data-set for the period 1999 to 2010, workers' adjustments to intensified low-wage competition is analyzed. Utilizing within-industry...