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This paper examines geographic differences in the effect of immigration on the wage distribution of native Italian workers. The results suggest an insignificant effect across the wage distribution in northern provinces, but large and significant effects in the lower and middle parts of the distribution in the south. This is entirely because immigration pushed up wages at the lower end of the female wage distribution in southern local areas. This result is consistent with increases in labor market participation of native women that went hand in hand with improvements of women's skills at the bottom of the wage distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study exploits the variability in the incidence of recent immigration inflows and the change in native employment in the Italian provinces to shed light on the impact of immigration on employment in rigid local labour markets. The study focuses on the period that followed the financial and sovereign debt crises, which strongly hit the labour markets of the Italian provinces. The results reveal a negligible overall impact of immigration on provincial employment which, however, hides differentiated impacts for different groups of natives. Employment responses to immigration shocks vary greatly depending on the skills and gender of the natives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a model that incorporates capital accumulation and spatial spillovers across economies, while allowing for regional differences in absorptive capacity. This model is estimated using a sample of EU regions, over a period including the enlargement of the single-market area in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century. Results confirm the relevance of local absorptive capacity that is directly linked with the process of making the most of externalities. Capital deepening reduced the role of capital in explaining the regional productivity gap, but was not enough to help lagging regions to equal the return to human capital investments reached by most advanced regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the returns to education taking into consideration the existence of educational mismatches in the formal and informal employment of a developing country. Results show that the returns of surplus, required and deficit years of schooling are different in the two sectors. Moreover, they suggest that these returns vary along the wage distribution, and that the pattern of variation differs for formal and informal workers. In particular, informal workers face not only lower returns to their education, but suffer a second penalty associated with educational mismatches that puts them at a greater disadvantage compare to their formal counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to check if the rate of employment dismissal in the Spanish labour market is higher for immigrants from countries of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) than for the native-born and the immigrants from other developing countries. It also analyses the impact on this rate of the lower endowment of human capital and the segregation in particular occupations and sectors of ENP immigrants. Design/methodology/approach – The study exploits micro-data from the Labour Force Survey before and during the great depression in Spain. The authors define two groups of immigrants, one for those whose origin is an ENP country and another for those from the rest of the developing countries. Then the rate of job loss is computed for the natives and the two groups of immigrants based on the information for each individual in the sample for each of the years under analysis. An empirical model for the probability of employment dismissal is estimated to check if the immigrant-native gap vanishes when controlling for differences in human capital and occupational, sectoral, and territorial allocation of jobs. This traditional approach is complemented with a new proposal based on the decomposition of the gap using a method that does not impose the same response to the observed characteristics in the three demographic groups under analysis. Findings – Immigrants from ENP face a higher rate of employment dismissal. The gap with respect to natives and even to other immigrants increased during the crisis. Most of the gap can be explained by the lower endowment of human capital of the ENP immigrants and, particularly, by their allocation in certain occupations, sectors, and territories. Originality/value – Novelties in this paper include: first, the study of employment layoffs for natives and immigrants in a period of crisis in a country such as Spain that attracted massive migration during the booming period; second, the analysis of the origin of the higher rate of employment dismissal for immigrants from the ENP; and third, the proposal of a new approach to assess the contribution of human capital and segregation on the immigrant-native gap in the rate of job loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profound crisis that has affected the Spanish economy since mid-2008 has been characterized by significant job losses and a marked rise in the country's unemployment rate. However, unemployment has had a differential impact on different population groups. Compared to natives, immigrant workers have experienced higher rates of job loss. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the differences between immigrants and natives (distinguished by gender) in terms of their probability of suffering job loss in the downturn of late 2008 and 2009. Our results indicate that the higher rate of job loss among female immigrant workers can be fully explained by their lower endowment of human capital. By contrast, human capital endowment and over-representation in certain occupations, sectors and regions in which the crisis had greatest impact do not appear to be the only reasons for the penalty suffered by immigrant males in terms of their chances of losing their job in the downturn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article checks for the robustness of the estimate of the impact of market access (MA) on the regional variability of human capital, derived from the New Economic Geography literature. The hypothesis is that the estimate of the coefficient of the measure of MA is actually capturing the effect of regional differences in the industrial mix and the spatial dependence in the distribution of human capital. Results for the Spanish provinces indicate that the estimated impact of MA vanishes and becomes nonsignificant once these two elements are included in the empirical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Regional disparities in unemployment rates are large and persistent. The literature provides evidence of their magnitude as well as of the role of certain factors in explaining the unemployment gap between regions. Most of these studies, however, adopt an aggregate approach and so do not account for the individual characteristics in each region. This paper, by drawing on micro-data from the Spanish wave of the Labour Force Survey, seeks to remedy this shortcoming. An appropriate decomposition of the regional gap in the average probability of being unemployed enables us to distinguish between the contribution of differences in the regional distribution of individual characteristics from that attributable to a different impact of these characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Regional differences in real wages have been shown to be both large and persistent in the United States and the U.K., as well as in the economies of other countries. Empirical evidence suggests that wage differentials adjusted for the cost of living cannot only be explained by the unequal spatial distribution of characteristics determining earnings. Rather, average wage gap decomposition reveals the important contribution made by regional heterogeneity in the price assigned to these characteristics. This paper proposes a method for assessing regional disparities in the entire wage distribution and for decomposing the effect of differences across regions in the endowments and prices of the characteristics. The hypothesis forwarded is that the results from previous studies obtained by comparing average regional wages may be partial and nonrobust. Empirical evidence from a matched employer-employee dataset for Spain confirms marked differences in wage distributions between regions, which do not result from worker and firm characteristics but from the increasing role of regional differences in the return to human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article pays special attention to the spatial dimension of public capital in regional economic growth. We assume that the effect of infrastructure on productivity depends on the type of public infrastructure in question: that is, local infrastructures enhance economic activity in the area where they are located, whereas transport and communication infrastructure may produce both benefits in the area where they are located and positive or negative spillovers to other regions. We also obtain conclusions on whether the link between growth and public capital depends on the amount of existing public capital stocks. Results for the Spanish provinces during a long time period suggest that the returns to local infrastructure are much greater than the returns to transportation, although in both cases, we observe strong decreasing returns to their accumulation. Finally, negative spillovers across regions in transport capital investments are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade, foreign direct investment, and inter-regional R&D spillovers facilitate competition, the spread of knowledge, and the adoption of more advanced technologies, which in turn hastens total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The spread of these efficiency gains from internationalization requires a sufficient local knowledge to enable them to be adapted to the domestic productive environment. Thus, higher local knowledge and internationalization will lead to TFP growth, and the greater the complementarity between variables the higher the TFP growth. We test the complementarity hypothesis using Spanish regional data over the period 1980–1995 in which both regional local knowledge and internationalization experienced a notable increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent contributions to the regional science literature have considered spatial effects in empirical growth specifications. In the case of spatial dependence, following theoretical arguments from new economic geography, and endogenous growth models, this phenomenon has been associated with the existence of externalities that cross regional borders. However, despite the general consensus that interactions or externalities are likely to be the major source of spatial dependence, they have been modelled in a rather ad hoc manner in most existing empirical studies. In contrast, we advocate basing the analysis on structural growth models which include externalities across economies, applying the appropriate spatial econometrics tools to test for their presence and estimate the magnitude of these externalities in the real world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we propose a set of tools for analysing the regional distribution of unemployment. As we are interested in the characteristics of the distribution as a whole, results from a traditional regression analysis are complemented with those obtained by estimating its external shape before and after being conditioned to factors underlying regional unemployment. In addition, we specifically consider the spatial characteristics of the distribution, and the empirical model we develop to determine explanatory factors includes spatial effects. This framework is applied to the study of the provincial distribution of unemployment rates in Spain. Results point to increasing spatial dependence in the distribution of regional unemployment rates, and a change in the factors causing regional differentials over the last decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the incidence of broadband on regional productivity in Brazil, intending to find out if the economic impact is uniform across all territories of the country. The possibility of performing a regional approach to test the effect of broadband on productivity in an emerging country represents a novelty for the literature. Results suggest that the impact of broadband on productivity is positive although not uniform across regions. On the one hand, it seems to depend on connection quality and network effects. Faster download speed and critical-mass accounting for network externalities in the region enhance the economic impact of broadband. On the other hand, higher productivity gains are estimated for the less developed regions. The fact that the less productive regions in Brazil seem to be benefiting more from broadband may suggest that it can constitute a factor favoring regional convergence in the country. • This paper analyses the incidence of broadband on regional productivity in Brazil. • Results suggest that the impact of broadband on productivity is positive although not uniform across regions. • Faster download speed and critical-mass accounting for network externalities enhance the economic impact of broadband. • Higher productivity gains were found for the less developed regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]