The political geography of central government debt has hardly been investigated. We propose a method for calculating implicit interregional transfers stemming from central government debt. We apply this method to Belgium over the 1970-2016 period. The share of poorer Francophone Belgium in...

We introduce endogenous labour supply decisions with an extensive and intensive margin in a spatial computational general equilibrium model. We show that endogenising labour supply generates an additional economic loss from a negative economic shock compared to a model with fixed labour supply....

This paper analyses the wage demands of a sector-level monopoly union facing internationally mobile firms. A simple two-country economic geography model is used to describe how firms relocate in function of international di erences in production costs and market size. The union sets wages in...

De hoge (para)-fiscale druk in België wordt gezien als een belangrijke oorzaak van de hoge werkloosheidsgraad. Deze hoge werkloosheidsgraad gaat echter gepaard met een hoog aantal openstaande vacatures. Men kan zich dan ook de vraag stellen of verdere lastenverlagingen zullen bijdragen tot een...

This paper looks at how increasing economic integration affects wage bargaining between unions and firms if firms are internationally mobile. Using a simple NEG model we find that if firms are perfectly mobile, countries are sufficiently symmetric and wages are bargained over at the firm level...

Over the last two decades the share of national income which accrues to labour has followed a marked downward trend across a host of industrialised countries. This paper attempts to assess the importance of several potential causes of this phenomenon. We investigate compositional effects, the...

We estimate how trade openness affects the relationship between wages, labour productivity and foreign wages using sector-level time series for several EU member states. In some countries wages became less responsive to foreign wages as trade costs declined. We show this counter-intuitive result...

We estimate how trade openness affects the relationship between wages, labour productivity and foreign wages using sector-level time series for several EU member states. In some countries wages became less responsive to foreign wages as trade costs declined. We show this counter-intuitive result...

Developing countries have increasingly engaged in Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) to attract foreign investors. While it is found that BITs are successful in attracting FDI, we argue that the effectiveness of BITs depends on the type of FDI. We find the effect of BITs to differ importantly...