Non-technical summary: Unemployment rates are significantly different across regions in Belgium. In the search for an explanation for this fact, we simultaneously estimate a wage and labor productivity equations where we include regional dummies as explanatory variables. We find that the...

In the global recession of 2009, exports declined precipitously in many countries. We illustrate with firm-level data for Belgium and Peru that the decline was very sudden and almost entirely due to lower export sales by existing exporters. After the recession, exports rebounded almost equally...

This paper analyzes employment growth in Belgian multinational enterprises' headquarters relative to their affiliates. We find that headquarters have on average 2.5% more employment growth than their affiliates. When they go through restructuring headquarters reduce employment by 4.4% less than...

This paper uses firm level data to analyze the regional competitiveness of two federal Euro area countries, Belgium and Germany. Competitiveness is defined as the labor cost per unit of output and hence takes into account productivity differences. Analyzing regional competitiveness is important...