Vojtech Nosek (p), Pavol Hurbanek

Kosyo Stoychev

see extended abstract

Vojtech Nosek (p), Pavlina Netrdova (p)

Torben Dall Schmidt

see extended abstract

Torben Dall Schmidt (p)

Vojtech Nosek

International mobility of labor is of increasing interest. A concern may in that respect be the possible presence of a foreign-native wage gap to the disadvantage of foreign workers. Such foreign-native wage gaps are here analyzed in two steps. First a model of union wage bargaining is presented comprising both native and foreign workers and pointing to the importance of foreign origin and union bargaining power in firms for the wage gap. Three propositions on the foreign-native wage gap results from the model relating to share of foreign workers, unionization and importance of competences of foreign workers in the firm. In a second step these propositions are tested based on a unique dataset of 21.478 cross-border commuters in the aftermath of the financial crisis from 2008 to 2011 comparing Danish, German and Polish backgrounds. Danish backgrounds are interpreted as native, while German or Polish backgrounds are interpreted as foreign, as all workers are employed in Denmark. Cross-border commuting data offers an advantage of avoiding possibly important confounding factors in terms of labor market and integration policies that typically influence the labor market behavior of workers residing in a country. The empirical results show the presence of a foreign-native wage gap of about 10-13 percent. Also, results lend support to two propositions of the model presented. A higher share of native workers tends to decrease the wage gap and more union involvement in wage setting reduces wage gap particularly for foreign workers with Polish origin. This may be interpreted as unions prioritizing fight of social dumping. The third proposition stating that foreign workers comprise particular competences valuable for the firm does not find support.

Kosyo Stoychev (p)

Vojtech Nosek

Border regions and cross-border issues are very profound research topic in contemporary regional studies. Bulgarian geographical position at the “geopolitical border” between Europe and Asia makes the borders more complicated as any other borders in Europe. Bulgaria has a space that cover the ancient historical and geographical provinces of Thrace, Moesia, Dobrudja and Macedonia. All these provinces are split up among two or tree contemporary countries, but at the same time, in our point of view, they are border regions. The borders do not just split up the countries politically, they create Bulgarian, Greek and Turkish Thrace, Bulgarian and Romanian Dobrudja, Bulgarian and Serbian Moesia, and Bulgarian, Greek and Macedonian Macedonia. All the countries in the region create their own policy programs, historical ideological myths and ways to connect the border regions with the central places in their own countries. Bulgaria and its neighbor countries are spatially dominated by a central city (capital city) which merely concentrates more than 15% of the population and produce more than 25% of national GDP. In this case, all the spatial structures outside the central city are provincial spaces with lower rank. That spatial structure has “stick” all the innovations, start-ups, high skilled labor to the central capital city place and its relations to the border regions.
Bulgaria passed a too long transition period, which caused uncontrolled internal migrations from the border regions to the country central capital city and EU. Regional disparities have increased badly, and many spatial border regions structures related to market potential, labor skills, and productivity went down under the minimum demand and supply threshold. For a long time, Bulgaria was not in the position and couldn’t apply public policies that preserve the basic spatial structures, nevertheless the costs, and closed many public services in the border regions. As a result, has been lost population, basic educational, health care, security and military infrastructures and the population structures reached unthinkable levels of negativity.
Mapping in mind the border regions of Bulgaria, we could see that borders and border regions mainly concern the historical and geographical provinces of Thrace, Moesia, Dobrudja and Macedonia. In addition, after the Syria conflicts and the new governance policies in Turkey, Bulgaria-Turkey border has back to the control phase of the Iron gate era, without the security capacity of Iron gate era. The paper research these effects on the contemporary economic perspectives of the border regions.