Diese Studie untersucht, welche Lehren aus den Erfahrungen nordamerikanischer Städte hinsichtlich der Entwicklung neuer Möglichkeiten
einer exportorientierten Produktion in Großstädten gezogen werden können. Zu diesem Zweck wurden sechs Fallstudien zu nordamerikanischen
Metropolregionen durchgeführt, die sich durch einen hohen wirtschaftlichen Entwicklungsstand und eine hohe Lebensqualität
auszeichnen. Dies waren Atlanta, Boston, Montreal, Pittsburgh, San Francisco und Seattle. Der aktuelle Bericht fasst diese
Fallstudien zusammen, stellt einen datenbasierten Vergleich der jeweiligen Metropolregionen mit Wien dar und diskutiert eine
Reihe von Erfahrungen, aus denen die Stadt Wien potenziell lernen könnte.
Supported by: Anniversary Fund of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank
Study by: Austrian Institute of Economic Research
Lifelong learning is of increasing importance for developed countries facing structural change and rising labour market dynamics.
To foster lifelong learning, Austria introduced an educational leave programme ("Bildungskarenz") in 1998. Two reforms, in
2001 and 2008, have since made this programme one of the most generous educational leave programmes among OECD countries.
The 2001 reform increased the leave benefit to the level of the unemployment replacement rate, but only for employees of age
45 or older. For those under 45 the benefit level remained at the much-lower level of subsistence allowance. This differential
treatment ended in 2008, when a major reform aligned the leave benefit for employees under the age of 45 to those for older
employees. Using administrative data on all private sector employees in Austria the research proposed in this project will
use this 2008 reform to analyse the causal effect of an increase in benefit generosity on programme take-up. We will also
analyse whether the reform has had heterogeneous effects on participation in lifelong learning for different subgroups of
the labour force. Furthermore, we will investigate whether participation in lifelong learning has a positive effect on the
wage of programme participants, whether the 2008 reform had an effect on the difference between pre- and post-participation
wages and which subgroups show the largest benefit from taking educational leave. Finally, we will analyse whether participation
in lifelong learning increases individuals' resilience against macroeconomic shocks and investigate whether those who took
educational leave had lower unemployment during the Great Recession.
Study by: Austrian Institute of Economic Research – Masaryk University Brno
Supported by: Austrian Science Fund
This project uses the rich historic experience of repeated large-scale and unexpected economic (dis-)integrations at the Austrian-Czech
border to test the predictions of economic geography models of regional development. In particular we analyse the impact of
these dis-integration events on regional development: first, in both Austria and the Czech Republic so that we focus on two
countries which for a substantial part of the period analysed were characterised by rather different political regimes and
huge differences in incomes and costs, that additionally changed over time; second, for a large set of (dis-)integration episodes
that span a period of almost a century so that we compare different (dis-)integration events, that took place at different
points in time at which the considered countries differed substantially in income levels and institutions; third, with respect
to many potential adjustments (such as population and employment and unemployment growth as well as firm entry and exit) that
will inform future research on the mechanisms through which the regional economic effects of integration operate.
Das WIFO erstellt vierteljährlich einen Bericht zur Konjunktur in den österreichischen Bundesländern, der über die jeweils
rezente Entwicklung in wesentlichen Wirtschaftssektoren und auf dem regionalen Arbeitsmarkt Aufschluss gibt.