STEM Graduates, Human Capital Externalities, and Wages in the U.S. Previous research suggests that the local stock of human capital creates positive externalities within local labor markets and plays an important role in regional economic development. However, there is still considerable uncertainty over what types of human capital are most important. Both national and local policymakers in the...

We examine the ability of the Expansionary Fiscal Contraction (EFC) hypothesis to explain the performance of of OECD economies during times of crisis. We ̄nd some limited evidence in its favour: if public consumption is reduced in response to a ̄scal crisis (as de ̄ned by a high level of debt), private consumption does seem to increase. However the size of the e®ect is smaller than that typicall...

The eastern enlargement of the European Union in 2004 triggered a large flow of migrant workers from the new member states to the UK and Ireland. This paper analyzes the impact of this migration wave on the real wages in the source countries. I consider the case of Lithuania, which had the highest share of emigrants relative to its workforce among all ten new member states. Using data from the ...

This paper studies how electoral outcomes can shape individuals’ migration decisions. Using the Italian mayoral elections data from 2001 to 2014, I study how foreign citizens’ internal migration with a regular residency permit in North-Italy can be affected by the election of a mayor affiliated to the Northern League (Lega Nord) party, a far-right political movement characterized by a strong fe...

Although panel data have been used intensively by a wealth of studies investigating the GDP-pollution relationship, the poolability assumption used to model these data is almost never addressed. This paper applies a strategy to test the poolability assumption with methods robust to functional misspecification. Nonparametric poolability tests are performed to check the temporal and spatial homog...

This paper considers the problem of how to construct price indexes on a panel data set. First a suitable panel data set is constructed by merging Eurostat’s Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) with a cross-section of OECD data. Second, seven different methods for constructing price indexes on a panel are proposed. These are then applied to the merged HICP/OECD data set. Temporal and spat...

This paper explores the determinants of victimization at the neighborhood level, using data from the French victimization survey. Its contribution to the economics of crime literature is threefold. First, I provide evidence that neighborhood characteristics explain victimization better than individual characteristics. Second, I find that local unemployment rate is one of the most important fact...

Many countries shift substantial public resources across jurisdictions to mitigate spatial economic disparities. We use a general equilibrium model with multiple asymmetric regions, labor mobility, and costly trade carve out the aggregate implications of fiscal transfers. Calibrating for Germany, we find that transfers indeed deliver smaller disparities regions. This comes at cost lower nationa...

Are Youths on Income Support Less Happy? Evidence from Australia The central research question addressed in this paper is how receipt of income support payments affects the well-being of youths. Using 1997-2004 panel data from a nationally representative survey of Australian youths, we attempt to estimate the size of the welfare stigma faced by Australian youths, where stigma is defined as the ...