The paper bases itself on recent theoretical writings in growth economics that emphasize the effects of both own R&D efforts and of interregional technology spillovers on regions´ productivity. We propose robust estimation techniques to evaluate the R&D spillovers across West German functional...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

"Differences in regional labour market conditions are still pronounced in Germany, especially between the Eastern and the Western part. Traditional neoclassical models imply that labour mobility should reduce disparities. In contrast, models that include externalities or selective migration...

"Recent theoretical research deals with economic costs and benefits of cultural diversity related to immigration. However, empirical evidence regarding the impact of cultural diversity on economic performance is still scarce. This paper investigates the significance of cultural diversity of the...