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2010/26: Dialects, cultural identity and economic exchange

It has long been argued that economic phenomena are affected by culture. However, the causal effect of cultural ties on economic exchange is difficult to identify, chiefly because cultural ties are endogenous to the current level of economic exchange, and because it is hard to separate culture from other influences. In this paper, we address these issues by using a novel measure for cultural identity—historical dialect differences across regions of the same country. We evaluate linguistic micro-data from a unique language survey conducted between 1879 and 1888 in about 45,000 German schools. The recorded geography of dialects comprehensively reflects local cultural differences that have been evolving for centuries and provides an ideal opportunity to isolate cultural costs from other barriers to economic exchange. In a gravity analysis, we then show that cross-regional migration flows in the period 2000–2006 are positively affected by historical dialect similarity, a finding that indicates highly time-persistent cultural borders that impede economic exchange even at a fine geographical scale.

2010/24: Wage inequality in Spain: A regional perspective

This study examines wage inequality in the Spanish labour market from a regional perspective, drawing on stochastic dominance techniques. The main findings are, firstly, that wage inequality exhibits a significant regional heterogeneity and, secondly, that the reduction of wage inequality in the Spanish labour market in recent years is a general phenomenon. It is also observed that regional differences in workforce heterogeneity and the mix of jobs and workplaces and their returns are influential factors in the explanation of regional heterogeneity in the levels of wage inequality.

2010/20: International industry migration and firm characteristics: some evidence from the analysis of firm data

This article examines firm characteristics associated with the probability of relocating part of the activity in a foreign country. Using manufacturing firms’ micro data for the 1999-2005 period, we find evidence that cost-cutting objectives are the main determinants for offshoring production, that firms with lower profits are more likely to undertake in-house offshoring, and that imports from low-wage countries increase the likelihood that part of the activity will be relocated. We also find that most offshoring firms are foreign – nearly 76% of the total.

2010/19: Peers, neighborhoods and immigrant student achievement – evidence from a placement policy

We examine to what extent immigrant school performance is affected by the characteristics of the neighborhoods that they grow up in. We address this issue using a refugee placement policy which provides exogenous variation in the initial place of residence in Sweden. The main result is that school performance is increasing in the number of highly educated adults sharing the subject’s ethnicity. A standard deviation increase in the fraction of high-educated in the assigned neighborhood raises compulsory school GPA by 0.9 percentile ranks. This magnitude corresponds to a tenth of the performance gap between refugee immigrant and native- born children.

2010/18: The role of entrepreneurship education and regional context in forming entrepreneurial intentions

This study examines how the extent of entrepreneurship education within university departments influences students’ entrepreneurial intentions in three careers: computer science, electrical engineering, and business. Specifically, it proposes that the effect of such education is (1) contingent on its mode (active, e.g. business plan seminars, vs. reflective, e.g. theory lectures), (2) contingent on the regional context and (3) complemented by individual-level influences such as role models or work experience. Results show that active modes of entrepreneurship education directly increase intentions and attitudes, whereas the impact of reflective modes depends on the regional context. Parental role models and work experience are found to complement entrepreneurship education in different ways. The findings have important implications for theory building as well as for the practice of teaching entrepreneurship.

2010/15: Is agglomeration taxable?

Several theoretical papers that examine tax competition with agglomeration effects have stressed the possibility that the governments of jurisdictions in which economic activity is concentrated may tax firms more heavily (taxable agglomeration rents). In this paper, we examine the tax rate setting decisions taken with regard to the Spanish municipal business tax (Impuesto sobre Actividades Económicas). The analysis, carried out with a sample of 2,772 municipalities, focuses on the effect that urbanization economies, localization economies and the market potential of municipalities have on their business tax rates. High urbanization economies and high localization economies are found to increase the business tax rate. Although the evidence is weaker, the results also indicate that municipalities with better access to demand (of consumers) set higher tax rates.