Diese Dissertation untersucht, welchen Effekt die Bereitschaft von Arbeitnehmern zu räumlicher Mobilität auf die Höhe der Entlohnung hat. Nach einer Einführung über die vorhandene Literatur und den theoretischen Hintergrund der internationalen Mobilitätsforschung vergleicht der Autor die Einkommenshöhe von mobilen und ortsfesten Arbeitnehmern in Deutschland sowie die Entwicklung des Einkommens von Menschen, die innerhalb einer Region den Arbeitsplatz wechseln. Weitere Untersuchungen widmen sich den Fragen, welchen Einfluss das Geschlecht, die Firmengröße oder die Bevölkerungsdichte der Region auf die Einkommenshöhe haben. Die Arbeit ist die erste umfassende Studie zu den Lohneffekten räumlicher Mobilität in Deutschland. Publikationssprache: Englisch

Moderne Arbeitsmärkte erfordern ein hohes Maß an Flexibilität von Arbeitskräften und insbesondere von Arbeitslosen. Dabei kommt der Bereitschaft zur regionalen Mobilität im Zuge der tiefgreifenden Hartz-Reformen des deutschen Arbeitsmarktes eine zentrale Rolle zu. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht diese Forschungsarbeit die Bedeutung überregionaler Mobilität im Stellensuchprozess von Arbeitslosen. Basierend auf innovativen experimentellen Forschungsdesigns, reichhaltigen administrativen und Befragungsdaten und unter Verwendung aktueller ökonometrischer Analysen leistet Sebastian Bähr einen wichtigen Beitrag zur aktuellen Debatte über die Wirkung von Flexibilisierung auf soziale Ungleichheit am Arbeitsmarkt.

This book focuses on the questions of how territorial differences in productivity levels and unemployment rates arise in the first place and why territorial differences in labor market performance persist over time. Unemployment divergence and unemployment club convergence have been touched on in a large number of works and have recently also been studied using spatial econometric analysis. In this book we aim to develop the debate to include several important new topics, such as: the reasons why structural changes in some sectors cause slumps in some regions but not in others; the extent to which agglomeration factors explain regional imbalances; the degree of convergence / divergence across EU countries and regions; the role of labor mobility in reducing / increasing regional labor market imbalances; the impact of EU and country-level regional policy in stimulating convergence and the (unsatisfactory) role of active labor market policy in stimulating labor supply in the weakest economic areas.

China is a large developing economy and it has been deeply involved in globalization since its economic reform and opening-up. Simultaneously, China has seen a significant change in the spatial distribution of economic resources, especially capital and labor. In the recent 10 years, economists have made significant progress in both theoretical and empirical studies on related topics. The book provides an overview on the existing literature and current policy debates on what we have known and what we have misunderstood. This book includes an analytical framework of the New Economic Geography (NEG) with political economy to help us understand China’s regional development issues. The book of 10 chapters is organized into four thematic sections. The first section is a theoretical discussion on the relationship between economic agglomeration and interregional balanced development. The second section is a political economy analysis on regional and urban-rural development. The third section provides a summary on empirical literatures concerning from market segmentation and institutional barriers to production factor mobility. The final section consists of four empirical chapters on the relationship between agglomeration and balance, which is the core of relevant policy debates. The book argues that for China to achieve both efficiency and balance for regional development, China may need to reform its systems which constrain production factors mobility. This book is a valuable reference for readers who are interested in spatial economics and the Chinese economy, especially its regional and urban development.

This book brings together up-to-date findings on the regional dimensions of European labour markets. It provides a conceptual and empirical study of the interactions between the European economy and its regions, paying particular attention to the issue of the transition of Central and Eastern European countries to a market economy. The topics analysed include: the structure of the shocks affecting employment (regional, industrial, national), the relationships between labour market efficiency and the regional distribution of unemployment, wage flexibility in EU member countries or in their regions and the role of active labour market policies in affecting the regional distribution of employment and unemployment.

Despite the common understanding of the importance of desert development in the contemporary world, there are relatively few books published to date on this sub ject. The books and collective volumes published in this field deal primarily with environmental and physical aspects of desert development such as soil, agricul ture, vegetation, water resources, etc. In contrast, this book addresses the issues of regional and urban development in desert areas, which have not been given sufficient attention. The present book is socially oriented. It considers physical development of desert regions not as an end in itself, but rather as an essential precondition for creating socially attractive and desirable environments for human settlement. The book addresses the issues of desert development at three distinctive conceptual levels - region, urban envi ronment, and building -and deals with both cold and hot deserts. Approximately half of the chapters in this book are original contributions that have not been published elsewhere. The remaining chapters fall into two groups: 1) chapters which have been reprinted from various refereed journals, and 2) chapters initially printed elsewhere and revised by their respective authors specifi cally for this collective volume. In the former case, permission to reproduce the material has been obtained from the respective copyright holders, and the details of original publication and names of copyright holders are indicated in footnotes.