Does regional unemployment increase or rather decrease entrepreneurial activity? Although this question has been hotly debated among researchers for decades the answers yielded so far are ambiguous and inconclusive. The paper proposes an innovative approach that takes not only interregional...

Human capital is a driving factor of innovation and economic growth. Economic prospects of cities depend on high qualified workers' knowledge and therefore, attracting highly qualified workers plays a fundamental role for cities' prospects. This study contributes to the question which factors...

Border regions and border effects currently attract a lot of attention in political practice and economic research. Substantial interest in regions located along the frontiers of integrating countries is predominantly inspired by the presumption that their specific geographic position might...

A basic result of new economic geography models is that the proximity to consumer markets impacts wages and employment within regions. While there is a bulk of theoretical literature on new economic geography related empirical tests are still scarce. The present paper aims at providing some...

Border regions are likely to play a critical role within the special dynamics initiated by the enlargement of the EU. This paper deals with the effects of integration on labour market conditions in border regions. Within the framework of different theoretical approaches the effects of...

While barriers to trade between EU-15 and accession countries have been completely abolished on May 1st 2004, other integration impediments remain to exist in the enlarged EU. These will steadily decrease within the next years, e.g. by new member states joining the Schengen Treaty and Euro area....

EU enlargement is supposed to entail profound impact on the location of economic activities in Europe. Although there is concern about the implications of enlargement for regional disparities in the EU, corresponding empirical results are still rare. The objective of this analysis is to provide...

We investigate the convergence process among EU regions between 1980-2002 taking into account the effects of spatial heterogeneity and spatial spillover effects. The spatial regimes model allows for different steady-state growth paths. In contrast to previous analyses, the regimes in this paper...

Recent theoretical research deals with economic costs and benefits of cultural diversity related to immigration. Empirical evidence regarding the impact of cultural diversity on economic performance is still scarce. This paper aims at investigating the effects of diversity on innovation and at...

Increasing inequality in qualification specific employment prospects characterises labour markets in most highly developed countries. Theoretical models suggest that in-plant skill segregation might matter for the polarization of employment and wages. According to these models production...