With no doubt, the main cost of joining a currency area is the loss of monetary policy instruments at a national level (e.g. the exchange rate) as stabilisation mechanisms against macroeconomic disturbances that only affect one country of the area or affect them in different manners. As this...

Using microdata, we analyse the determinants of firm relocation and outsourcing decisions and their effects on firms' employment decisions. The results for a sample of 32 countries show that both strategies have been more intense in the EU-15 countries than in the rest and that, in some cases,...

This paper analyses the differential impact of human capital, in terms of different levels of schooling, on regional productivity and convergence. The potential existence of geographical spillovers of human capital is also considered by applying spatial panel data techniques. The empirical...

This paper investigates the role of institutions for labour market performance across European countries. As participation rates have been rather stable over the past, the unemployment problem is mainly caused by shortages in labour demand. Labour demand is expressed by its structural...

The paper analyses the link between human capital and regional economic growth in the European Union. Using various indicators of human capital calculated from census microdata, we conclude that the recent economic performance of European regions is associated with an increase in overeducation....

The objective of this paper is to analyse the existence or not of a wage curve in Colombia, paying special attention to the differences between formal and informal workers, an issue that has been systematically ignored in the wage curve literature. The obtained results using microdata from the...

The aim of this work is to assess the effectiveness of active labour market policies carried out by the Catalan Public Employment Services (SOC) during the year 2005. The results obtained from the application of matching techniques show that the probability of finding a job for an individual who...

One of the most obvious consequences of a monetary union is that monetary policy is lost as an instrument of national macroeconomic policy. The loss of the exchange rate as a national policy instrument has important implications for macroeconomic stability in the presence of asymmetric shocks,...

In a big amount of economies (NUTS-I) the evolution of manufacturing production is analysed using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross Added Value (GAV) data from National Accounts. In Spain, the problem of using these data is that they are not available as soon as it would be desirable. In...