In this chapter, we analyze immigration and its effect on urban and regional economies focusing on productivity and labor markets. While immigration policies are typically national, the effects of international migrants are often more easily identified on local economies. The reason is that...

This paper develops a theoretical model of the inequality in wages and salaries associated with differences in years of schooling (educational inequality, for short). Our model assumes that in the long run individual decisions to become more educated equalize the lifetime earnings of more...

This article presents an analysis of the models that have been developed in the literature to account for the rise in wage inequality during the 1980s and the 1990s. These models build upon the assumption of an acceleration in the rate of technological progress associated with the diffusion of...

Matched worker-firm data from Danish manufacturing reveal that 1) industries differ in within-firm worker skill dispersion, and 2) the correlation between within-firm skill dispersion and productivity is positive in industries with higher average skill dispersion. We argue that these patterns...

We use small Italian regions (i.e. provinces) to investigate the causal effect of foreign immigration on innovation during 2003-2008. Using instrumental variables estimation (based on immigrants' enclaves), we find that the overall stock of immigrants did not have any effect on innovation....

This paper studies the employment impact of business network agreements, an innovative policy instrument introduced in Italy in 2010 to stimulate interfirm cooperation, with the aim of increasing innovative capacity and market competitiveness. We estimate the impact of these networks on...

Older, industrial cities have suffered with the shift from manufacturing to services, but the increased importance of innovation as an economic driver may help industrial cities, which are often rich in the institutions that generate innovation. This paper studies how innovation is related to...

With the ensuing immigration reform in the US, the paper shows that targeted skilled immigration into the R&D sector that helps low-skilled labor is conducive for controlling inequality and raising wage. Skilled talent-led innovation could have spillover benefits for the unskilled sector while...