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Debates accompanying the global housing boom have primarily focussed on the economic and social implications for urban housing markets. Against this background, this paper analyses the repercussions for regional land prices of a national housing boom in and beyond agglomerations. Convergence and divergence dynamics, regional price drivers, and spatial diffusion are investigated by examining average building-land prices of 95 Austrian regions between 2000 and 2018. The results indicate a clear increase in regional disparities in land prices, with the main rise taking place during a high price-growth period. Regions with high land prices are the main drivers of divergence, while a substantial number of peripheral regions with converging land prices were hardly affected by the national price boom. Land-price growth rates are positively affected by the number of households but negatively impacted by income growth, which points to a problematic decoupling of household income and land prices. Finally, the diffusion of the land-price boom occurs along the urban hierarchy as well as via neighbouring regions, confirming the ripple-effect hypothesis.

Zusammenfassung Urbane Büro-Immobilienmärkte sind durch eine zunehmende Internationalisierung gekennzeichnet und werden von Investoren als Anlagemöglichkeit zur Diversifikation ihrer Portfolios genutzt. Angesichts dieser Entwicklung wird in der Literatur die zunehmende Synchronisation der Büro-Immobilienmärkte diskutiert. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht der Artikel, ob auch die europäischen Büro-Immobilienmärkte durch eine Synchronisation der Zyklen gekennzeichnet sind. Darüber hinaus wird gefragt, in wie weit Büro-Immobilienmärkte mit nationalen Konjunkturzyklen zusammenhängen und ob es zu einer Konvergenz der Büro-Spitzenrenditen zwischen den europäischen Hauptstädten kommt. Auf Basis von empirischen Untersuchungen mittels parametrischer und nicht-parametrischer Korrelationsanalysen und Konvergenzanalysen kann für Europa eine – wenn auch sehr ungleiche – Tendenz zur Synchronisation festgestellt werden. Weiters zeigt sich, dass der Zusammenhang der Zyklen mit anderen Büromärkten aus dem gleichen Land deutlich höher ist, als der durchschnittliche Zusammenhang mit jenen aus anderen Ländern. Die Büromärkte folgen im Wesentlichen dem Muster der monetären europäischen Integration: Einer Konvergenz der Spitzenrenditen in der Frühphase der Euroeinführung folgt eine markante Divergenz beginnend mit der Wirtschaftskrise im Jahr 2008/2009.

Studies conducted for the US have found a positive effect of human capital endowments on employment growth, with human capital endowments diverging at the same time. In contrast, studies for European countries have found convergence of human capital endowments. This paper tests these relationships for the 99 Austrian districts for the observation period 1971–2011 by estimating how the presence of high-skilled employment affects total, low-skilled and high-skilled employment growth. To this end, OLS, fixed-effects and first-difference regressions are estimated. The results indicate continuous convergence of high-skilled employment which, however, slowed down significantly since the 1990s. In contrast to previous studies, evidence for positive effects of high-skilled on total and low-skilled employment is only weak and varies over time. Furthermore, the results show that total and high-skilled employment in suburban areas grew faster than in other regions, while districts which bordered the Eastern Bloc were disadvantaged. Nevertheless, spatial neighbourhood effects within Austria are only weak.

Human capital is one of the key input factors for the competitiveness of developed countries and regions. As a result, demand and locational competition for highlyskilled individuals has sharply increased. Policy agents react by taking several policy measures, denoted here as “brain competition policy” (BCP). The first part of the paper analyses the relevance of attracting and retaining talent for small open economies and proves the high importance of BCP and foreign talent for these countries to manage their internationalisation of innovation, production and trade by means of four stylised facts. The second part describes the case of Austria along the lines of industrial specialisation and university performance taking into account patterns of path-dependency and structural change. It emerges, that the rather weak competitiveness of Austria in the competition for talent, i.e. “brain drain instead of brain gain”, can be – inter alia – explained by an unfavourabely large share of non-high-tech industries and a mediocre university performance. ... Wie lockt man die „neuen Argonauten“ nach Osterreich? Brain Competition Policy in kleinen offenen Volkswirtschaften Humankapital ist ein zentraler Inputfaktor fur die Wettbewerbsfahigkeit reicher Staaten und Regionen. Eine Nachfrageexpansion nach hochqualifizierten Arbeitskraften sowie ein Standortwettbewerb um diese sind die Folge. Wirtschafts- und Regionalpolitiker versuchen durch eine Reihe von Masnahmen, hier zusammengefasst unter dem Begriff “Brain Competition Policy” (BCP), Standorte fur in- und auslandische hochqualifizierte Arbeitskrafte zu attraktivieren. Der erste Teil des Aufsatzes belegt anhand von vier “Stylised Facts” die hohe Bedeutung von BCP und auslandischen hochqualifizierten Arbeitskraften fur kleine offene Volkswirtschaften. Danach wird die Situation Osterreichs im Wettbewerb um Hochqualifizierte anhand der industriellen Spezialisierung und universitaren Performance, unter Berucksichtigung pfadabhangiger Prozesse und des sektoralen Wandels erortert. Es zeigt sich, dass die schlechte Wettbewerbsposition Osterreichs („brain drain anstatt brain gain“) nicht zuletzt durch den Mangel an high-tech-Industrien sowie mit einem nur mittelmasigen Universitatssystem erklart werden kann.

Effects of the “Great Recession” on regional unemployment rates. The case of Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Contrary to the already encompassing literature on the differentiated effects of the “Great Recession” on states, this paper takes a regional economic perspective. To answer the research question which factors might explain the spatially unequal development of unemployment rates at the regional level, a cross-section data-set is used. Percentage point increase of regional unemployment rates between 2008 and 2009 is used as the dependent variable and a set of regional and national variables as independent variables; a multiple linear regression model is estimated. After detecting spatial autocorrelation for the OLS-estimators, the model is re-estimated and a spatial error model with ML-estimators is computed. It turns out that the share of low-skilled employees has a significant positive effect on the change of regional unemployment rates. Furthermore, financial centres showed a significantly better resilience than other regional economies. Because of the strong influence of national variables in these models, separate models are estimated for France and the UK. It is shown that the same variables have quite different effects. This questions the existence of a common explanation for regional unemployment dynamics in Europe.

The emerging knowledge economy has led to an increase of demand and locational competition for highly-skilled labour. Brain competition policy (BCP) is the reaction from national and regional policymakers. In short, BCP refers to the attraction, education and circulation of talent in and between regional and national economies. This new focus on human capital instead of physical capital indicates a paradigmatic shift in innovation policy and regional policy. While most of the contributions to this new policy approach come from the US, it can be demonstrated that different institutions in Europe prevent the simple copying of those strategies. The article contributes to the ongoing paradigmatic shift by conceptualizing a coherent framework for BCP from a European perspective. Abstract La emergente economia del conocimiento ha llevado a un aumento de la demanda y competencia en localizacion de mano de obra altamente especializada. Las politicas de competencia por talento (PCT) son la reaccion nacional y regional de formuladores de politicas. En resumen, PCT se refiere a la atraccion, educacion y circulacion de talento dentro de, y entre, economias regionales y nacionales. Este nuevo enfoque en cuanto a capital humano en lugar de capital fisico indica un cambio paradigmatico en politicas innovadoras y politicas regionales. Aunque la mayoria de aportes a este nuevo enfoque de politicas proviene de los EE.UU., se puede demostrar que las diferentes instituciones europeas impiden el copiar simplemente dichas estrategias. El articulo contribuye al cambio paradigmatico continuo mediante la conceptualizacion de un marco coherente para PCT desde una perspectiva europea.