A recent string of "new economic geography" (NEG) models has set focus on the impacts of trade liberalisation on the intra-national distribution of economic activity. What the existing contributions have in common is a basic two-sector assumption (agriculture/manufacturing) and a resulting focus...

Large-scale transport infrastructure investments connect both large metropolitan centres of production as well as small peripheral regions. Are the resulting trade cost reductions a force for the diffusion of industrial and total economic activity to peripheral regions, or do they reinforce the...

In this paper, using the framework of a Roy theoretical model, we examine the performance of return migrants in Albania. We ask two main questions: (i) Had they chosen not to migrate, what would be the performance of return migrants compared to the non-migrants? and (ii) What would be the...

This paper examines the free-market and socially optimal outcomes in a dynamic oligopoly model with R&D spillovers. First-best optimal subsidies to R&D are higher when firms play strategically against each other but lower when they cooperate on R&D (at least with high spillovers) and when they...

Since the abolition of the Wages Councils in September 1993, agriculture is the only sector in the UK economy covered by any form of minimum wage legislation. This paper investigates the impact of the system of minimum wages on the level and structure of earnings in agriculture and the level and...

This paper examines the responsiveness of real income and the balance of payments to external shocks in a small open economy. It is shown that tariff restrictions and wage rigidities tend to increase responsiveness and quota restrictions tend to reduce it. The implications for policy response...

In this paper we analyse the impact of different remuneration systems on capital formation and employment at the sectoral and at the aggregate level. We show that, in general, the switch from a Fixed Wage Economy to a Share Economy results in a lower NAIRU. This conclusion is derived by...

This paper uses evidence on employment, labour force, and wage differentials by skills from a number of OECD countries to investigate on the characteristics and the consequences of a skill-biased shift in the structure of labour demand and labour supply. A convex relationship between wages...

Barely a day goes by without some expert telling us how the continental European economies are about to disintegrate unless their labour markets become more flexible. Basically, we are told, Europe has the wrong sort of labour market institutions for the modern global economy. These outdated...