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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of whether emerging economies benefit or suffer more because of value-chain activities than advanced economies do. Specifically, it focuses on the consequences in terms of individual wages.

Panel data techniques are used to estimate an expanded Mincerian wage equation over the period 1995-2007. The analysis is performed using micro-level data for two countries that represent two different experiences of value-chain activities in Central Europe: Germany and Slovenia.

Increasing value-chain activities reduce wages for low-skilled workers in high-skill-intensive industries in Germany, hence driving up the skill wage premium. Conversely, evidence is found of a decreasing skill wage premium as a consequence of increasing value-chain activities in Slovenia. Finally, increasing value-chain activities reduces the wages of workers in low-skill-intensive industries in both Germany and Slovenia.

This paper analyses the effect of value-chain activities on wages. It is the first empirical assessment that brings individual wage data directly into the picture for an international comparison focussed on two Central European countries that represent “two faces” of value chains. This paper shows that the effects of increasing value-chain activities on wages differ by country, by industry and by individual skills.

Might a country’s economic growth performance differ depending on the evolution of its human capital? This paper aims to consider education as a channel for human capital improvement and then for economic growth. The authors hypothesize the existence of a threshold for education, after which point the characteristics of economic growth change.

To address this question, the authors turn from a linear framework to a nonlinear one by applying smooth transition specifications.

This empirical analysis for Spain points to the existence of nonlinearities in the relationship between education and economic growth at country level, for both secondary and tertiary education. Next, as different patterns emerge in different regions, the authors provide a regional analysis for a number of representative Spanish regions. The results show that both secondary and tertiary education matter for economic growth and that nonlinearities in this relationship should be taken into account.

What is learnt from using Smooth Transition Regression models for the education-economic growth link is that the educational level of the population can be understood as a source of nonlinearities in the economic activity of a country (and of a region). Thus, depending on national and regional educational levels, economic growth behaves differently.

Although the importance of nonlinearities has been identified, linearity is usually assumed in this field of the literature. This paper calls into question the linearity assumption by using time series techniques for 1971-2013 in Spain, an OECD country, and testing whether the results at country level hold for different regions within Spain as a robustness check.