This paper provides a critical overview and a detailed research agenda for scholars interested in regional studies with a special focus on old and new European Union member states. The focus is on the microeconomic foundations of structural change and its spatially asymmetric impact on labour...

Italy has an immobile social structure. At the heart of this immobility is the educational system, with its high direct, but especially indirect cost, due to the extremely long time necessary to get a degree and to complete the subsequent school-to-work transition. Such cost prevents the...

The aim of this book is to contribute to the debate on the continuity/fracture of regional patterns of development and employment in old and new European Union (EU) regions. Several contributions in this book suggest that a factor common to all backward regions, often neglected in the...

The focus of this chapter is on the microeconomic foundations of structural change and its spatially asymmetric impact on labour markets. EU economies are undergoing dramatic industrial restructuring due to a number of causes, such as the Eastward enlargement and economic integration of Central...

This paper provides a critical overview and a detailed research agenda for scholarsinterested in regional studies with a special focus on old and new European Union memberstates. The focus is on the microeconomic foundations of structural change and its spatiallyasymmetric impact on labour...

This paper suggests that the insufficient work experience of young people as compared to adults is the major cause of the hardship the former experience in the labour market both in terms of employment and wages. Economists are bewildered as to the determinants of and as to the ways to cure the...

This paper provides a critical overview and a detailed research agenda for scholars interested in regional studies with a special focus on old and new European Union member states. The focus is on the microeconomic foundations of structural change and its spatially asymmetric impact on labour...

This paper provides the first available evidence on overeducation/overskilling based on AlmaLaurea data. We focus on jobs held 5 years after graduation by pre-reform graduates in 2005. Overeducation/overskilling are relatively high - at 11.4 and 8% - when compared to EU economies. Ceteris...

This paper aims to survey the theoretical and empirical literature on cross-country differences in overeducation. While technological change and globalization have entailed a skill-bias in the evolution of labour demand in the Anglo-Saxon countries, instead, in other advanced economies in...