Introduction -- Determinants of Regional Unemployment: Worker Turnover Across Italian Regions -- Spatial Patterns of German Labor Market: Panel Data Analysis of Regional Unemployment -- Compensating Wage Differentials Across Russian Regions -- Convergence Across Regions in Kazakhstan -- Agglomeration Economies: Agglomeration Economies and Employment Growth in Italy -- Do Agglomeration Externalities Enhance Regional Performances in Production Process? A Stochastic Frontier Approach -- Employers' Agglomeration and Innovation in a Small Business Economy: The Italian Case -- Differences in Human Capital and R& D: Do FDI in Business Services Affect Firms' TFP? Evidence from Italian Provinces -- Explaining the Patenting Propensity. A Regional Analysis Using EPO-OECD Data -- Family Origin and Early School Leaving in Italy: The Long-Term Effects of Internal Migration -- The Effect of University Costs and Institutional Incentives on Enrolments: Empirical Evidence for Italian Regions -- Globalized Markets, Globalized Information and Female Employment: Accounting for Regional Differences in 30 OECD Countries -- Regional Policy: Structural Funds and Regional Convergence. Some Sectoral Estimates for Italy -- Fostering the Self-Employment in Spain: An Evaluation of the Capitalization of Unemployment Benefits Programme -- Regional Price Indices and Real Wage Equalization in Poland.

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.