Achieving fair and sustainable growth in a small, highly open economy requires careful alignment of productivity, innovation and social balance. This workshop explores how cross-border mobility, talent attraction and labour migration influence Luxembourg’s growth model, with a particular focus on the role of skilled migration in promoting innovation, entrepreneurship and the adoption of AI technologies. The workshop also examines how housing costs and spatial constraints influence mobility and retention, as well as how the public sector can provide a stabilising refuge for native workers amid intensifying international competition.
Bringing together keynote speakers, leading scholars and stakeholders, the programme connects frontier research with pressing challenges: pressure on public finances, modest innovation performance, a tight housing market, and rising real estate wealth inequality. The workshop also considers how to sustain social cohesion in an increasingly diverse society. In line with the LISER Policy Lab’s mission, the workshop aims to translate academic innovation into evidence-based policy design.
Programme
10:00-10:10 Welcoming and introduction by André Gröger (LISER)
Session 1: Cross-border mobility, talent attraction, and labour movement
- 10:10-11:00 Keynote: Michel Bierlaire (EPFL-Lausanne) — New methods for building synthetic populations
- 11:00-11:20 Silvia Peracchi (UCLouvain) — Wages, housing prices and labour mobility in the Greater Region
- 11:20-11:40 Joël Machado (LISER) — Attraction and retention of talent in Luxembourg
- 11:40-12:00 Alexander Yarkin (University College Dublin) — Cross-border inflows and natives’ labour market outcomes
- 12:00-12:10 Discussion (Q&A)
Lunch
Session 2: Challenges for fair and sustainable growth
- 13:30-14:20 Keynote: Giovanni Peri (UC Davis) — High-skilled immigration, innovation and growth









