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on Economic Geography |
| By: | Valente J. Matlaba (University of Waikato); Mark Holmes (University of Waikato); Philip McCann (University of Groningen); Jacques Poot (University of Waikato) |
| Abstract: | This paper combines classic and spatial shift-share decompositions of 1981 to 2006 employment change across the 27 states of Brazil. The classic shift-share method shows higher employment growth rates for underdeveloped regions that are due to an advantageous industry-mix and also due to additional job creation, commonly referred to as the competitive effect. Alternative decompositions proposed in the literature do not change this broad conclusion. Further examination employing exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) shows spatial correlation of both the industry-mix and the competitive effects. Considering that until the 1960s economic activities were more concentrated in southern regions of Brazil than they are nowadays, these results support beta convergence theories but also find evidence of agglomeration effects. Additionally, a very simple spatial decomposition is proposed that accounts for the spatially-weighted growth of surrounding states. Favourable growth in northern and centre-western states is basically associated with those states’ strengths in potential spatial spillover effect and in spatial competitive effect. |
| Keywords: | regional employment; shift-share analysis; spatial autocorrelation; spatial spillovers; Brazil |
| JEL: | J21 O18 N66 R11 |
| Date: | 2012–07–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wai:econwp:12/08&r=geo |
| By: | Ulrich Zierahn |
| Abstract: | The regional employment growth in Germany is characterized by huge disparities. Whereas institutional factors might explain the disparities of employment growth between nations, they can only account for a minor fraction of the regional employment growth. Instead the sectoral structure of employment is often seen as a major reason for regional disparities. An important attribute of the research conducted so far is that it concentrates on estimating shift-share-regression-models when controlling for the influence of the sectoral structure on employment growth. However, these models do not account for spatial interdependencies and treat regions as autarkies, though on a regional level such effects are very likely to occur. Against this background, the present article focuses on analyzing the role played by spatial interdependencies between regions in explaining their employment growth. By using spatial econometric methods this article emphasizes that regional employment growth is characterized by spatial autocorrelation, pointing to spatial interdependencies between the regions. This holds true also for mayor factors of regional employment such as wages and qualification. In this article three different models of spatial interdependencies are being compared: the spatial lag, spatial error and cross regressive model. While the spatial lag model controls for the influence of the value of the endogenous variable in neighboring regions (i.e. the spatial lag of the endogenous variable) on the endogenous variable in the observed region, the spatial error model estimates the influence of the spatial lag of the error term. Finally, the cross regressive model includes the spatial lag of the exogenous variables. These spatial interdependencies are integrated into the framework of the shift-share-regression-model to identify the relevant spatial interdependencies and to measure their influence on the regional employment growth in Germany. Preliminary results indicate that the spatial autocorrelation of the regional employment growth is to a large extend caused by the spatial lags of the exogenous variables. The spatial lag of the endogenous variable and the error term become insignificant, when the spatial lags of the exogenous variables are being accounted for. These effects can be interpreted as spatial spillover effects. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p205&r=geo |
| By: | Theodore Tsekeris; Klimis Vogiatzoglou; Stelios Bekiros |
| Abstract: | The paper describes a spatial economic agent-based model (ABM), consistent with the principles of new economic geography (NEG), which allows the discrete-time evolutionary simulation of complex interactions of household and firm location choices. In contrast with the current ABM approaches, it considers a multi-regional (multi-urban) setting to enable a more realistic representation of decisions related to commuting, migration and household and employment location. The model allows simulating spatially differentiated, multi-commodity markets for land and labor in a system of cities and the behavior of profit-maximizing firms with multi-regional asset investment decisions, incorporating endogenous intra- and inter-urban transport costs with congestion effects. It also accounts for the impact of industrial and urban agglomeration forces on location choices and the formation of urban development patterns. Other features include the representation of the actions of central and local government agents to address issues of territorial development, efficiency and equity. The simulation set-up and evolutionary analysis of the spatial ABM are presented and several implications are discussed with regard to the possible outcomes of a set of policy interventions. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p479&r=geo |
| By: | Hisamitsu Saito; Munisamy Gopinath; JunJie Wu |
| Abstract: | A wide urban-rural disparity is observed in employment growth in the United States. For example, employment growth averaged 2.1 percent in urban counties during 1998-2007, compared with just 1 percent in rural counties. In this study, we examine the sources of U.S. employment growth using the county-level industry data. From an analytical labor-market model, we derive equilibrium employment growth as a function of growth in neighborhood characteristics and initial conditions such as accumulated of human capital, industrial structure and natural amenities. The equilibrium employment growth equation is then estimated using spatial econometric techniques, which account for spillovers from employment growth in neighboring counties. Specifically, a spatial lag model is estimated using U.S. county and industry data from 1998-2007. Results show positive growth spillovers from both urban and rural regions, but the former has relatively large impacts on regional employment growth. The statistical significance of the spatial-lag coefficient in most U.S. manufacturing and service industries suggests the presence of a strong spatial multiplier effect. Evaluating the contribution of alternative factors to employment growth, we find that initial accumulated human capital is the key determinant of regional employment growth. The decomposition of the urban-rural gap in employment growth shows spillovers from urban (rural) regions widen (narrow) the gap. The latter suggests that collaboration among rural regions in economic development can be effective in narrowing the urban-rural gap in employment growth. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1129&r=geo |
| By: | Mercedes Rodriguez; JosÈ Antonio Camacho |
| Abstract: | There is a rich debate in the innovation literature about to what extent innovation has become an international (or globalised) phenomenon, or, on the contrary, it maintains its local/regional character. As Koschatzky (2001) notes, given the fact that knowledge is commonly tied to personal capabilities; it has a clear geographical component. In the case of knowledge-intensive services (KIS) most of analyses come to the same conclusion: distance is particularly relevant when knowledge (mainly of a tacit type) is diffused. Starting from this premise, a burgeoning literature on the contribution of those knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) to regional innovation has emerged. Most of these papers adopt a national perspective, that is, analyse regions in a specific country. On the contrary, comparisons of regional features have been carried out in very few papers: Germany and the UK (Simmie and Strambach, 2006) or Germany and France (Muller and Zenker, 2001) are two examples. The objective of this paper is to take a step further and examine the distribution of knowledge-intensive services (KIS) in the European regions. For so doing we employ the data provided by the Regional Innovation Scoreboard (RIS) 2009. This database provides information on the innovation performance across 194 regions of the European Union and Norway. The methodology employed is known as spatial analysis and evaluates whether there are clusters in the location of KIS in the European regions, which involves three processes. First, to evaluate the existence of spatial autocorrelation by means of global statistics; the Moran’s I and the Geary’s C. Once verified the existence of positive spatial autocorrelation, it is possible to identify “clusters” of regions with high and low participations of KIS by using a local indicator of spatial autocorrelation (LISA). Finally, employing an econometric model, some potential explanatory factors for the concentration of KIS are examined. The results obtained support the hypothesis that KIS are spatially concentrated and confirm that spatial clusters are different in northern/central and southern/eastern regions. Moreover, a close relationship between location of KIS and regional innovation performance is found. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p277&r=geo |
| By: | Patricia Suárez; Matías Mayor |
| Abstract: | The paper uses the theoretical framework of the Spatial Economics to analyze (1) the regional unemployment disparities in Spain for males and females in three different age categories and for economic sector. We use administrative regional aggregate data to explore the distribution of the unemployed in 8109 Spanish districts (using monthly 2005-2009 data). Furthermore (2), we connect this distribution with the efficient (or inefficient) location of Employment Offices in Spain. Due to existence of asymmetric information between job seekers and firms we think that an Employment Offices increase the employment opportunities therefore reduce local unemployment. We estimate a spatial panel model in order to explain the unemployment disparities including regional fixed effect and the distance to the closest Employment Office. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p958&r=geo |
| By: | Sascha Sardadvar |
| Abstract: | Recent empirical studies on regional economic growth have extended regressions on convergence to account for externalities and spatial dependencies. Most of these studies, however, set the focus on whether regional output levels display convergence trends and consequently tend to ignore persisting or widening disparities that may occur at the same time. This paper examines the simultaneous occurrence of regional convergence and divergence tendencies in Europe by applying a spatial econometric model specification that is derived from a neoclassical growth model. Depending on factor endowments and relative locations in space, divergence may occur within sub-groups of regions despite an overall observation of convergence. The observation area comprises 253 European regions of the EU and EFTA on the NUTS2 and equivalent level, with empirical results provided for an observation period from 2001 to 2007. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p575&r=geo |
| By: | Xavier Vence; Manuel Gonzalez |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to contribute toa better understanding of the Knowledge Intensive Services spatial distribution across the European Union(EU) regions(NUTSII), linking recent research approaches on innovation and structural change with approaches to regional economics. As a means of conducting this research, we classify economic activities according to six sectors based on their knowledge/technology intensity. Our results show that the higher the knowledge/technology content of the economic activity, the higher the concentration level of the activity. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1377&r=geo |
| By: | Annekatrin Niebuhr; Javier Revilla Diez; Fabian Böttcher; Friso Schlitte |
| Abstract: | Increasing inequality in qualification specific employment prospects characterises labour markets in most highly developed countries. Theoretical models suggest that in-plant skill segregation might matter for the polarization of employment and wages. According to these models production technology and the educational level of the work force are important determinants of skill segregation. There are some studies that investigate the increasing in-plant skill segregation at the national level. However, since production technologies and skill structures are characterized by pronounced regional disparities, there are likely significant differences in the level of segregation between regions. But empirical evidence on corresponding regional inequalities is lacking. The objective of this analysis is to investigate regional disparities in skill segregation in Germany. Moreover, we analyse the determinants of these differences at the regional level. Our findings point to marked disparities among German regions. While rural areas are characterised by a weaker segregation, agglomeration areas have a higher level of skill segregation. Furthermore, skill segregation is increasing in most areas during the period under consideration, which may have regional economic consequences. The results of a regression analysis indicate that the local endowment with human capital is an important determinant for the regional level of skill segregation. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p640&r=geo |
| By: | Panagiotis Artelaris; Dimitris Kallioras; George Petrakos |
| Abstract: | The evaluation of regional inequalities and the monitoring of their evolution (regional convergence/divergence analysis) is an issue of extreme interest in the field of regional science as it demonstrates the role of market dynamics and appraises the effectiveness of regional policy. Extending the methodology of (regional) convergence clubs, the paper examines for the existence of convergence clubs, in per capita GDP terms, among the NUTS III regions of Greece during the period 1995–2005. The approach of (regional) convergence clubs relies on recent paradigms of economic growth and indicates the existence of (regional) convergence within (regional) convergence clubs without the precondition of (regional) convergence between those clubs. The findings of the paper do not verify the existence of regional convergence clubs in Greece. In contrast, they reveal clear trends of divergence, (identifying, additionally, sub-clubs of divergence) stressing out the underestimation of the country’s regional problem. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p697&r=geo |
| By: | Imre Lengyel |
| Abstract: | More and more scholars of regional science are interested nowadays in the question what role do clusters in city-regions play in the knowledge-based economy. This question can be dealt with from the functional or nodal regions point of view and one has to examine the factors that influence regional competitiveness. The answers are especially important for the Hungarian city-regions, since between 2007 and 2013 they are aimed with significant subsidies from EU regional development funds to improve their competitiveness. In this paper we outline our analytical framework: the pyramid model of regional competitiveness. After this the paper assesses the competitiveness types of the Hungarian functional subregions, as city-regions (LAU1). A complex methodology, with the help of multi-variable data analysing methods, is used throughout our statistical analysis to underlie the classification of city-regions. For the clusters mapping in these regions we apply the location quotient (LQ) method. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p313&r=geo |
| By: | Megha Mukim |
| Abstract: | Innovation is crucial to regional economic competitiveness and to productivity growth. A salient feature of the Indian economy is the geographic concentration of both, economic activity and innovation, as measured by patent activity. Theoretical models argue that the clustering of economic activity within a geographic region results in knowledge spillovers, which in turn drives innovation. The literature also posits that the presence of human capital is critical to the generation of new knowledge. This paper studies how and why economic geography and factor endowments matter for innovative activity – in other words, what is the relationship between human capital and patent generation, and crucially, how is this affected by the spatial distribution of economic activity? The paper analyses patent activity, both applications and grants, between 1995 and 2004 across districts in India. By using an econometric model, it then relates innovation to measures of agglomeration, industry-type and the size distribution of firms, and to the distribution of human capital endowments. It also uses data on employment by industrial activity, productivity and FDI flows. Understanding the magnitude of the effects of economic geography and factor endowments is vital for policy formulation aimed at encouraging innovative activity. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1356&r=geo |
| By: | Hannu Tervo |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes long-term spatial developments in Finland by focusing on two predictions of the new economic geography (NEG) models, the increasing persistence of locational patterns and the emerging agglomeration shadow, i.e. the rising dominance of growth centers. Pre- and post-war periods are distinguished to roughly express the shift from an agriculture-based economy to a post-industrial country. The analyses base on the assumption that each of the 19 Finnish regions has a center of its own and the rest of the region forms its local hinterland. The empirical analysis is based on regional population data from 1880 to 2004 at decade intervals. First, to analyze the persistence of locational patterns the variation in the rank of regions over time and the evolution in rank-size distributions at different stages of development are examined. Second, to analyze the dominance of centers and causal processes between cities and their local hinterland before and after WWII an extension of the Granger causality method using a panel framework is applied. The results indicated that persistence in locational patterns increased in Finland during the processes of industrialization and urbanization. Furthermore, in the pre-war period, centers and their hinterlands grew hand-in-hand, while the post-war period shows that cities cast an agglomeration shadow over their local hinterland. In all, the paper gives evidence in favour of the NEG predictions. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p147&r=geo |
| By: | Gervasio Santos; Eduardo Haddad; Geoffrey Hewings |
| Abstract: | The objective of this paper is to evaluate the long-run regional impacts of tariff policy of the Brazilian electric power sector. The structural reforms carried on this sector determined the emergence of two different spatial distribution trends of the electric power tariffs among the Brazilian states: one of convergence and another of spatial divergence. The regional dispersion of tariffs is being influenced by the spatial features of the Brazilian economy, which is marked by the high degree of spatial concentration and the hierarchical distribution of large markets on the space. In spite of this, the electric power price differentials in Brazil tend to be determined by the market size differentials, which provide different conditions for gains from economies of scale by the electric power distribution companies. Based on these elements and in the fact that electric power is an important input for the production process, an Interregional Computable General Equilibrium model for energy policy analysis was built. The simulations showed that the input-output linkages, the spatial heterogeneity of the electric power intensity and the regional energy substitution differentials are the main determinants of spatial impacts of electric power price changes in Brazil. On the other hand, the recent trend of spatial divergence of the electric power prices may be contributing to reduce the national real GDP and to increase the regional inequalities in Brazil. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p157&r=geo |
| By: | Florian Noseleit; Rene Söllner |
| Abstract: | In this paper we study the impact of diversity on regional growth by extending the existing literature in such that we differentiate between industry diversity and human capital diversity. In order to measure human capital diversity we construct a regional measure based on individual occupational data. In fact, based on panel data for German regions we find empirical evidence that regions with higher degrees of human capital diversity exhibit higher GDP-per-capita and employment growth, as well as higher patent-output per R&D-worker. So far the empirical literature whether regional specialization or regional diversification encourage knowledge spillover and therefore promote regional growth mainly focused on the diversity of the regional industry structure and thus disregards that knowledge transmission merely occurs between individuals. This was already described by Jacobs (1969), and is also recognized by Glaeser et al. (1992) who emphasize the importance of interaction between people in close geographical distance for innovation. Nevertheless, the existing literature typically relies on the regional industry diversity as an indicator for the breadth of the local knowledge base. However, we argue that the diversity of skills and knowledge at the individual level rather than the diversity of industries reflects the scope of the local knowledge base and the potential for spillover. A more fruitful approach should therefore take a more disaggregated view on this topic by looking at the diversity of skills and abilities at the level of individuals. We apply two strategies to assure that human capital diversity is not just a proxy of the regional industrial structure. First we calculate a variable for the regional industry diversity equivalent to the occupational diversity using regional industry employment shares at the three digit industry level. Second we incorporate regional employment shares of 27 out of 28 aggregated industries as additional explanatory variables in our regression. Furthermore, skill complementarity and substitutability in production, as well as differences in the importance of knowledge spillovers should be addressed with a detailed consideration of changes in the regional industry structure. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p245&r=geo |
| By: | Maksim Belitski; Julia Korosteleva |
| Abstract: | The importance of entrepreneurship as a driving force in the economic development has been widely recognised. Respectively, a growing number of empirical studies have focused on explaining variation in entrepreneurial activity at various spatial levels with the majority of them taking either a cross-country perspective or looking at the inter-regional differences. Given limited city-level data availability, scarce work has been undertaken so far on cross-city entrepreneurship within the spatially oriented entrepreneurship research. Furthermore, to our best knowledge, no empirical studies exist on entrepreneurship across European cities and our paper aims to bridge this gap. The object of the paper is to analyse the variation in entrepreneurial activity across European cities. More specifically, by harmonizing the city level data in 31 European countries, based on European Urban Audit Survey (Eurostat) data, we undertake a panel data study of how various demographic, socio-economic, ethnic and geographical characteristics of European cities and institutional country-level settings affect entrepreneurship in 377 European cities during the period of 1989-2006. We use the rate of self-employment as a measure of entrepreneurship. While controlling for various spatial effects across cities we find that the rate of self-employment is largely explained by city size, socio-economic characteristics, such as the level of education and city inhabitants' wellbeing, city ethnicity and size of a local government. Institutional quality, including a property right system and democratic institutions, and city location affect entrepreneurship. Our findings fail to support a hypothesis of the importance of capital city incubators, Euroregions and EU enlargement for entrepreneurial activity. Surprisingly, our city location results suggest that cities in the south of Europe are more entrepreneurial than in the north. Along with a positive effect of a lower education and insignificant effect of a city typology associated with high-tech entrepreneurship. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Agglomeration, Labour market, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Urban JEL Codes: L26 R10 R30 O31 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1646&r=geo |
| By: | Christian Dreger; Konstantin Kholodilin; Michael Artis |
| Abstract: | The degree of comovement of economic activity across states or regions is an issue of utmost importance to policymakers. Asymmetric business cycles are often seen as an impediment to the formation of a common currency area. However, it has been argued that a common monetary policy in itself could reduce the cyclical asymmetry. We examine real business cycle convergence for 41 euro area regions and 48 US states. By looking at the regional dimension, a larger information set can be exploited and might offer new insights. Regions tend to be more open to trade than countries and the degree of specialisation is usually higher than at the national level. If diverging trends cancel out in the aggregate, policy conclusions based on national evidence could be misleading. Regional comovements may be caused not only by common business cycles, but also by other factors due to location. They can be linked to industrial structures and migration, but can also reflect non-economic factors like habits, heritage, and culture. Spatial spillovers have been largely neglected in previous studies, thereby creating omitted variable bias. A panel model allowing for spatial correlation is a convenient way to capture these effects. This analysis is also relevant from a monetary policy point of view. By comparing the synchronization of economic fluctuations in US states and comparable euro area regions, the perspectives of a common monetary policy in Europe can be assessed. The US provides a natural benchmark in this respect. Both the US and the euro area share similar socio-economic characteristics, regarding the size, the level of development, culture etc. The results obtained by a panel model with spatial effects indicate that the impact of national business cycles for the regional development has been rather stable over the past two decades. Hence, a tendency for convergence in business cycles often detected in country data is not confirmed at the regional level. The pattern of synchronization across the euro area is similar to that across US states. Although cyclical heterogeneity is detected, it does not indicate a serious impediment to a common monetary policy of the ECB. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p317&r=geo |
| By: | Axel Schaffer; Jan Rauland |
| Abstract: | There is broad consensus among economists that regions’ competitiveness heavily relies on their ability to produce innovative goods and services (Baumol 1967, Romer 1990, Grossman and Helpman 1991, Barro and Sala-i-Martin 1997, Los and Verspagen 2006). Main drivers of innovation include, but are not limited to, human and cognitive capital (Quelle), R&D expenditures (Quelle), industrial clusters and structure (Quelle) and foreign direct investments (Quelle). Most empirical studies confirm the presumed positive correlation of these inputs and regional innovativeness, measured for example by patent applications. At the same time, regions operating at similar input level show significant differences in the degree of innovativeness. These differences can, to some extent, be explained by the regions efficiency in using their available input factors (Quelle). The presented paper aims, in a first step, to identify this efficiency by using an outlier robust enhancement of the data envelopment analysis (DEA), the so-called order-α-frontier analysis (Daouia and Simar 2005, Daraio and Simar 2006), for a sample of more than 200 EU regions (NUTS 2). The findings of this model suggest that the regions’ efficiency is partly affected by a spatial factor. Therefore, the study foresees to decompose regional efficiency into a spatial and non-spatial part by introducing a geoadditive regression analysis based on markov fields. The spatial part reveals differences of the efficiency for greater areas. Regions located in efficient areas, for example, are likely to be efficient as well, since they benefit by the efficiency of neighboring regions. In contrast, the non-spatial effect gives an idea on a region’s efficiency compared to the neighboring and nearby regions. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1108&r=geo |
| By: | Daniela Schettini; Carlos Roberto Azzoni; Antonio P√°ez |
| Abstract: | More competitive regions tend to present higher level of economic growth, with positive reflexes on social aspects. The different economic performances observed among regions are explained mainly by the spatial concentration of the economic activities. This paper aims to analyze the influence of space on the regional competitiveness behavior of the Brazilian manufacturing industry. In doing so, it uses a panel data of 137 mesoregions and industry sectors that are aggregated in four categories according to technology intensity, during 2000 to 2006. We apply the stochastic frontier of production methodology to obtain the measures of regional efficiency and the Markov spatial transition matrixes that analyze the dynamic of the transition of the regions among efficiency categories considering their local spatial context. We found evidences that there is a higher probability of the regions to become less competitive when the neighborhood is not considered. On the other hand, when considering spatial influences, we observed that the probability of a good neighborhood (more competitive) in stimulating the region’s efficiency is higher than the probability of a bad neighborhood (less competitive) in lowering its efficiency. In other words, the pull effect of the neighborhood in the competitiveness of the Brazilian regions is stronger than the drag effect. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1052&r=geo |
| By: | Alexander Kubis; Mirko Titze; Matthias Brachert |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the impact of industrial clusters on regional growth at level of German labour market regions within a regional convergence model. It focuses on vertically connected industrial sectors, which can emerge parallel to horizontal interconnections. Based on works of Schnabl (2000) it is possible to identify three different effects of industrial clusters on regional economic performance. Beside the effects of regionally concentrated economic sectors (horizontal clusters) and value-added production chains (vertical clusters) on the region itself, the paper segregates regional spillover effects of industrial clusters. Furthermore, the study allows the isolated examination of the impact of industrial clusters while taking regional convergence into consideration. In addition to the all-German process of convergence and the specific East German process, positive growth effects of industrial clusters are detected. Therefore industrial clusters present an opportunity to explain deficits within the process of East-West convergence. The relative absence of industrial clusters in East Germany influences the growth potential in a negative way. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p459&r=geo |
| By: | Giuseppe Di Giacomo; Fabio Mazzola |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to examine interregional interactions in public expenditure (for NUTS I and NUTS II level regions) using a new database on Italian Regional Public Accounts (RPA) over the period 1996-2007. Intergovernmental interactions are particularly important for assessing the impact of the reform towards fiscal federalism which is currently under way in Italy. As pointed out by Salmon (1987,2002), a more decentralized system implies that governments situated at the same level in a multi-level governmental system compete each other as well as with those located along the hierarchy. Competitive behavior is also a key element in many recent models of local government behavior (Brueckner, 1997, 2000) and is now the focus of a growing empirical literature based on strategic interaction in local policy decisions analyzed through the estimation of a reaction function (Millimet, 2002; Revelli, 2003). The paper provides empirical evidence on complementary/competitive relationships in terms of capital public expenditure using the approach originally developed by Dendrinos and Sonis (1988, 1990). This model has been applied to income variables in several papers (Hewings et al. 1996, Magalhaes et al.1999, Dall’erba et al., 2003) but the use of policy variables has not been explored yet. By investigating the occurrence of competitive versus complementary interactions in regional public expenditure, the paper suggests that the definition of a fiscal federalism scheme should take into account adequately both direct and indirect effects. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p637&r=geo |
| By: | Torben Dall Schmidt; Peter Sandholt Jensen |
| Abstract: | In recent years, foreign labour has become an essential issue in Western Europe. Recent research suggests that foreign labour has implications for regional growth patterns and employment opportunities of native workers. Yet, few studies go into the dimension of the regional determinants of recruitment of foreign labour underlying these regional growth effects. Therefore, this paper considers determinants of the regional location of foreign labour. Specifically, we investigate the role of social networks for the spatial distribution of work permits in the context of the Danish regions. We first investigate motives for recruiting foreign labour by analysing the particular case of Southern Denmark relying on recently collected employer survey data with roughly 2,000 records. We also analyse on regional differences in work permits across all Danish regions. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p350&r=geo |
| By: | Fredrik Carlsen; Kare Johansen; Lasse Sigbjorn Stambol |
| Abstract: | European labour markets display large variations in unemployment rates across regions as well as between education groups. Insufficient labour force mobility is widely considered the main culprit behind regional unemployment disparities, but few studies have examined the link between interregional mobility and variation in unemployment rates across education groups. This paper employs administrative registers covering the entire Norwegian population to compute annual time series from 1994 to 2004 of migration flows and regional labour market conditions by educational level for 90 travel-to-work areas. We find that geographical disparities in unemployment rates are decreasing in education level, whereas the response of migration to fluctuations in regional unemployment rates is increasing in education level. Our results suggest that low regional mobility of low educated workers contributes to high unemployment disparities across regions and education groups as well as high overall unemployment. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p693&r=geo |
| By: | Miroslav Sipikal |
| Abstract: | Foreign direct investment could be very important external source for economic growth, especially in the less developed countries. Several studies showed strong concentration of FDI in most developed regions of the hosting countries, which lead to increasing regional disparities within these countries. FDI often cause crowd out effects for domestic firms in lagging regions. The article will examines role of regional policy in FDI attraction in order to achieve more regional benefits from FDI. We will analyze most often measures taken by regional policy and its interaction with other policies. We will show case study of several regions in Central Europe as an example. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p126&r=geo |
| By: | Vicente Ruiz; Lewis Dijkstra |
| Abstract: | To account for differences among rural and urban regions, the OECD has established a regional typology, classifying TL3 regions as predominantly urban (PU), intermediate (IN) or predominantly rural (PR). This typology has proved to be meaningful to better explain regional differences in economic and labour market performance. However, it does not take into account the presence of economic agglomerations if they happen to be in neighbouring regions. Remote rural regions face a different set of problems than rural regions close to a city, where a wider range of services and opportunities can be found. This paper suggests a refinement of the current typology to include a criterion on the accessibility to urban centres. The results show a clear distinction between remote rural regions and rural regions close to a city in terms of declining and ageing population, level of productivity and unemployment. This extended typology, which includes a measure of distance from cities for the population living in a rural area, has been first applied to Europe by the Directorate of Regional Policy of the European Commission and then to North America by the OECD. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1650&r=geo |
| By: | Antonio Rodrigues; Rita Santos |
| Abstract: | The debate over Growth, regional disparities and social inequalities within the European Union (EU) has originated much attention amongst academics and policy makers. This is only so, as there is a clear causal relationship between these and quality of life in general. Public intervention, which can and have been directed both at the supply and the demand side of the economy, has proved necessary, although insuficient as market forces per se have proven inefficient in terms of resource allocation. The objective of the present paper is to analyse, at the regional level, trends in income levels per capita, human capital measured with an education proxy, material deprivation and general well-being. Markov transition matrices will first be used to compare cluster dynamics, using local indicators of spatial autocorrelation (following Rey, 2001). This analysis will be extended to include analysis of within-quadrant movements. A growth model including human capital and material deprivation allowing for spatial lags will be used to evaluate te impact of education and poverty on income levels. The dataset used is taken from the Cambridge Econometrics database, Eurostat and the European Social Survey, for a total of 192 NUTS2 EU regions. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1100&r=geo |
| By: | Hasan Engin Duran |
| Abstract: | Since early 90s, the issue of income convergence across regions has been widely discussed in a number of papers, both looking at long-term tendencies and trying to establish the role played by several socio-economic determinants. Much less attention has instead been devoted to the analysis of short-run convergence dynamics and the relationship with national business cycle. In the few papers that tackle this issue it is generally found that income disparities follow a pro-cyclical pattern, increasing during times of national expansions and decreasing in recessions. However, two important aspects have not yet been adequately studied in this specific area of research. First, is the relationship between national business cycle and regional income disparities linear or, rather, nonlinear. Second, what are the mechanisms and economic reasons behind the cyclical evolution of regional income disparities? And, more specifically, is the cyclical evolution a consequence of difference in the timing with which the business cycle is felt in regional economies or, alternatively, is it mainly motivated by the presence of size differences across local cyclical swings. In the present paper, we investigate the above issues using a combination of established and newly developed nonparametric tools applied to data on the states of US between 1969 and 2008. Keywords: Cyclical Regional Disparities, Regional Business Cycles, Income Convergence |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p594&r=geo |
| By: | Franz Kronthaler; Katharina Becker; Kerstin Wagner |
| Abstract: | Start-up activities are considered to be important for regional economic development and vary considerably between regions. As entrepreneurial activity in a region is strongly influenced by its regional conditions, we analyse the role of the conditions and their impact on start-up activities. The main objective of the paper is to identify the variables which are relevant for a typology of regions in terms of their start-up activity and to have a closer look on their region specific characteristics. For the analysis we use the spatial level of Swiss mobilité spatiale regions (MS). MS regions are functional units based on economic interaction and commuting movements. At this level, data is available which provide information about the endogenous entrepreneurial potential of regions. Furthermore, it is possible to distinguish between peripheral, semi-peripheral, urban regions and agglomerations. Cluster analysis and regression analysis are used to examine the relationship between regional conditions as influencing factors and real start-up rates. The selection of the indicators is based on a review of results of the theoretical and empirical literature on entrepreneurship. Cluster Analysis serves to compare different regions according to their structural potential for start-up activities. The method is used to form several homogeneous groups of Swiss labour market regions according to their individual structural potential and for comparative purposes. With the help of regression analysis we analyze whether the different types of cluster really explain start-up activity and if obstacles for entrepreneurial activity can be found. Results indicate that most of the regions use their potential for entrepreneurial activity. However, we also identify certain outliers with regard to the relationship of regional conditions and start-up activity. On the one hand, we observe regions with good structural conditions and high potential for new firm formation but low start-up rates. On the other hand, there are regions with unfavorable characteristics but relatively high start-up rates. Based on this analysis, we identify case specific variables influencing start-up activities under specific circumstances. These regions are potentially interesting cases for constructing regional policies. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p562&r=geo |
| By: | Chia-Lin Chen; Peter Hall |
| Abstract: | This paper will present empirical evidence on the wider spatial-economic impacts of High Speed Trains (HSTs) at the intra-regional level. It represents follow-up research to a previous empirical study at inter-regional level, based on UKIC125- an upgraded HST system. The findings suggest that HST has had substantial and demonstrable effects in aiding this transition within a 2-hour travel limit of London, but that the effects have not been automatic or universal. The need for integrated planning combining transport, economic, and spatial issues to promote dynamic city-region development should not be overlooked. Particularly, the UK is currently situated at the critical turning point considering a long-term commitment to High Speed Two (HS2): whether, to what extent, and how the arrival of a HST hub in a city could act as the agent of change for transforming surrounding sub-regions. Thus, a finer-grained and deeper-probing analysis at the intra-regional scale is needed, in the form of comparative case studies of two post-industrial city-regions. Lille/Pas-de-Calais and the Manchester city-region are chosen, the first to examine the effects of the TGV after its arrival in 1994, the second to provide a prognosis for Manchester and its neighbouring towns after the projected arrival of HS2. In the Lille Métropole, the TGV brought about a dramatic change in economic fortunes. But, within the wider Nord-Pas de Calais region, two divergent developmental trajectories of traditional manufacturing industries have increasingly manifested themselves: Lille Métropole has increasingly strengthened its service-based growth, whereas the former coal area and coastal region seems not to have attracted knowledge-based development. In the Manchester city-region, the new generation of 300 k/hr HST lines will undoubtedly in their turn have major spatial-economic impacts as Manchester is brought closer to London with the dramatic shrinking of critical time-distance. The relationship between Manchester and its neighbouring towns may however be negative to poorly connected towns like Burnley which is reflected in its weak economic performance. Overall, this research aims to fill in the gap with empirical evidence of intra-regional impacts of HSTs and disentangle the complex forces and the developmental phases in the dynamic process of city-region regeneration. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p335&r=geo |
| By: | Francesco Antonio Anselmi |
| Abstract: | In the seventies the policies of regional economic development in the OECD and in Europe were joined by the correction of economic (growth rates of GDP and income unbalanced) and technical differences and by inadequate allocations of human, financial, and infrastructural resources. Regional policies were based on the following points: a)Massive financial assistance (to develop infrastructures and public services) to the poorest regions; b)Creating artificial poles of economic development at regional level; c)Creation ex-nihilo of technology; d)Attempts to keep alive in declining industries to protect local employment. After twenty years of operations the results have been disastrous, and many countries in the OECD and EU have been questioned, on the usefulness of continuing to adopt them and today has become oriented towards a new paradigm, even in light of the phenomenon of globalization,. that rests on five pillars> 1)Regional policies directed to all regions from poorer to richer. 2) Measures to mobilize all means to put in a position to maximize the opportunities for development of all regions, through the formation of territorial capital, that allows to develop a multiplier of the investment. 3) The central government must ensure the maintenance of the quality of infrastructure, of public services and an environment conducive to the development of enterprises. 4) Actions on the level of infrastructure of intangible nature. These must be related to the dissemination of knowledge (education, training) of technology and innovation, measures aimed at the development of social capital; and all measures aimed at protecting of environment. 5)A regional policy developed nationally that must be consistent with the policies put in place, in regions and cities, with the processes of decentralization of responsibility accompanied by fiscal resources for their implementation. The objective of this research is to analyse some aspects of these new pillars aimed at overcoming regional economic, technical and infrastructural disparities and to ensure sustainable development promoting new methods and practices of strategic techniques in innovations oriented in cohesion and in regional competitiveness, through a process of integration of economic, social, cultural and environmental activity. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1314&r=geo |
| By: | Hiroshi Sakamoto |
| Abstract: | This study develops a policy model under the hierarchical administration system of the regional economy in Japan. In case of Japan, a hierarchy of national, prefectural, and municipal (city) administration exists, and a different regional policy in these each hierarchies can be set up. Generally, the policy and its evaluation might be different whether should give priority to national interests or to each region’s interests. To show such a situation, quantitatively analysis by using the computable general equilibrium model (CGE model) is examined. Concretely, Kitakyushu City and Fukuoka City are taken up as an administrative region at the city level. Together with these two cities and surrounding areas, it becomes Fukuoka Prefecture. On the other hand, the case of including Yamaguchi Prefecture, the adjacent prefecture, in these regions exists. In this case, it can be called Northern Kyushu Area by combining Fukuoka Prefecture and Yamaguchi Prefecture, and such a large area also becomes important in the regional policy as higher hierarchy. Five regions including the rest of Japan are focused on this study. Moreover, due to availableness of the input-output tables of these regions, respectively, the data base to develop the CGE model is estimated after tabulating the interregional input-output table. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p383&r=geo |
| By: | Corrado Zoppi; Sabrina Lai |
| Abstract: | The planning activity of the regional administration of Sardinia (Italy) is characterized by a deep change after the approval of the Regional Landscape Plan (RLP). The RLP, ruled by the National Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape, establishes the directions for future Sardinian regional planning and requires that sectoral, province and city plans, and plans for protected areas, be changed to comply with its directions. The adjustment process could be conflictual, since cities, provinces, and bodies responsible for protected areas might disagree with the regional administration about the rules established by the RLP. These are particularly restrictive for coastal areas, where cities could suffer a sharp decline in building expansion rights and risk losing financial resources that would come from the impact fees paid by the developers. Moreover, payments of communal tax for real estate might decrease, since the value of land would plummet without development rights. The investment attraction capacity of Sardinian coastal cities could therefore drop as a consequence of the ruling framework of the RLP. The Sardinian regional operational program 2007-2013 concerning the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) respects the rules of the ERDF on the investments for territorial cohesion (as defined by Regulation no. 1080/2006/EC), since it promotes their regional geographic concentration. With regards to Sardinian coastal cities, this paper analyzes the investment policies for public services and infrastructure implemented by the Sardinian Region through the Regional Operational Program, in order to assess the impact of the RLP. The first section develops a geographic information system (GIS) to define a territorial taxonomy of Sardinian coastal cities, by analyzing the spatial distribution of investment in public services and infrastructure and of other attributes concerning demography, urbanization, RLP ruling framework. The second section analyzes, through linear regression and logit methodologies, the investment policies concerning public services and infrastructure, and identifies correlations between the variables represented by the GIS. The methodological approach adopted in this paper can be used in regional planning processes to address the important issue of the often-conflictual relationship between the implementation of conservative planning policies and local economic development programs. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p713&r=geo |
| By: | Davide Fiaschi; Andrea Mario Lavezzi; Angela Parenti |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a methodology which combines elements of parametric regression analysis with the nonparametric distribution dynamics approach in order to analyse the role of some variables in the convergence of productivity across European regions over the period 1980-2002. We find that the initial productivity crucially accounts in the convergence process across European regions. Differently, employment growth seems not to play a role, while the Structural and Cohesion Funds seem to play a positive role, even though such effect seems to be very low and statistically significant only at the low bound of the range of initial productivity. The structural change of regional economies plays a positive role, but such effect is statistically significant only for the least productive regions. The output composition of a region in 1980 affects the convergence process of productivity growth in several ways. In particular, the share of non market services on output acts like a source of convergence from 1980 to 2002 but in the long-run it plays a negligible role. Finally, the share of finance acts like a force of divergence across European regions, especially for the least productive regions. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p320&r=geo |
| By: | Krister Olsson; Elin Berglund |
| Abstract: | In contemporary western cities, city marketing is widely applied as a means for local economic development, city competitiveness and attractiveness. In practice, city marketing generally includes a wide range of promotional, organisational and spatial strategies and activities. It is often manifested in city centre revitalization including upgrading of public space, the construction of spectacular entertainment and cultural amenities, and image enhancing activities. Parallel to the growing practice of city marketing, there has been a growing interest in city marketing within the academia. However, the literature on city marketing is by no means homogenous. City marketing is interpreted, described and valued in very different ways and there is, apparently, diverging opinions what city marketing is and what it means to a city and its citizens. Furthermore, the literature on city marketing tends to make general assumptions about the prevalence and nature of city marketing practice and fails to consider local and regional variations. Most empirical studies are concerned with big cities in international competition. To a great extent, there is a lack of knowledge in how city marketing is performed in small and medium-sized cities in a regional context. The aim with the paper is to contribute with empirical and theoretical knowledge about the prevalence, nature and meaning of city marketing by focusing Swedish small and medium-sized cities in various regional contexts. Through a review of city marketing literature, the development of a theoretical framework of city marketing, and an empirical study of city marketing practice in all Swedish municipalities, the paper is expected to contribute with new knowledge about both the practice and theory of city marketing. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p236&r=geo |
| By: | Simon Falck |
| Abstract: | This paper aims at analyzing location choice among foreign companies in Sweden. Using an empirical approach on micro data, their location choices are explored at the regional level and analyzed in a typology setting. Controls are made for industrial sectors and the role played by agglomeration economies. The results are consistent with the hypothesis on a strong relationship between location choice and agglomeration economies and also that industrial agglomeration play a role in location decisions. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1492&r=geo |
| By: | Anne Otto; Michaela Fuchs; Wolfgang Dauth |
| Abstract: | The description of geographical concentration and the search for its causes is at the focus of many studies. However, by not considering developments over an extended period of time, the majority of the studies mainly examine static relationships. This paper aims at filling this gap. We measure concentration in Western Germany for the time period from 1986 to 2006 with the Ellison-Glaeser index (EGI). In order to account for concentration processes at various levels, we investigate the long-run development of the EGI for NUTS3-regions and labour-market regions as well as for 43 two-digit-industries and 191 three-digit-industries. The Establishment History Panel provides detailed information about employment at the level of individual firms. The major part of the industries exhibits a larger degree of geographical concentration than one may expect when location decisions of firms are purely stochastic. This result holds true throughout our observation period irrespective of the applied spatial and industrial levels. Thus, regional concentration matters for about two thirds of all industries in Western Germany. However, despite concentration being significant, the value of the EGI is rather low for most of these industries. Since the mid 1980s, the shares of strongly localized and non-localized industries have been declining and increasing, respectively. Hence, dynamic changes of the industry-specific regional structure of economic activities have taken place at the lower and upper tails of the EGI distribution. A more detailed analysis of EGI rankings and changes is carried out for ten industry groups. All in all, sectoral shifts affect changes in industry-specific regional patterns. This holds true for old shrinking and stagnating industries and as well as for dynamic high-tech-manufacturing industries and business-related human-capital service industries. To confirm the descriptive findings in a multivariate setting, an econometric analysis is carried out. Using a multinomial logit model, we examine which forces lead to an increase, decrease or unchanged state of geographical concentration. Again, we find evidence that agglomeration externalities in old industries seem to have lost their importance. At the same time, the high-technology industries have not localized strongly enough to compensate for this effect. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p537&r=geo |
| By: | Ricardo AGUADO; Jabier MARTINEZ; Miguel Angel LARRINAGA |
| Abstract: | Research, development and innovation activities have become key sources of competitive advantage, which is one of the main factors behind the wellbeing of citizens living in a given territory. Being aware of this fact, public administrations at different administrative levels have encouraged the production of innovations through different public policies. On the other hand, firms that invest in research, development and innovation usually obtain in the long and medium terms innovative products and services that allow them to compete in favorable conditions in the local and international markets. If we focus in Europe, regional disparities in the amount of innovation inputs on one side and in the amount of innovation outputs on the other side are very high. In this paper the authors will measure the productivity of research, development and innovation activities performed by all regions in the EU. In order to do so, the authors will take into account some indicators to measure innovation inputs and outputs (related to science, technology and also to collaboration among agents in innovation activities and wealth creation) at the regional level. Using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) we will measure regional productivity in the field of R&D and innovation and we will compare this productivity outcome between regions in the EU. After explaining this first DEA model, we will use the main components analysis and then cluster analysis to achieve a typology of regions regarding their productivity in R&D and innovation activities. Once the typology of regions has been described and analyzed, the paper will end with some policy recommendations for each type of region, taking into account the regional innovation systems approach to innovation understanding and innovation policy. It may be possible to establish learning processes between different types of regions, taking into account the singularity and the unique mix of assets of each region. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p412&r=geo |
| By: | Alejandra Trejo |
| Abstract: | It is argued that the competitive capacities from the regional and local point of view can be constructed, that in fact are tied to territorial policies and to the development of a territorial culture that integrates the local system of companies. Moreover a process of such nature can contribute to overcome the deterioration of backward territories. The construction of territorial competitiveness has to be one along the fundamental lines of action of sub-national governments. The existence of a solid service sector and some degree of specialisation in tertiary activities are among a number of territorial diversity of factors which need to be taken into account in relation to the creation of competitive capacities. In addition globalisation has presumably played a significant role in the productive restructuring of economies; within this the service sector has had over the years an increasing quantitative and qualitative importance in economic structures. This urges to evaluate the role of the third sector, in a context of economic globalisation, in the processes of constructing regional competitive capacities. This paper aims at providing a wide-ranging assessment of efficiency of the third sector at the regional level and its sources as well as an examination of the territorial structure of services and commerce in Mexico, specialisation patterns and productive structures. Our interest is to begin a line of study to analyse the efficiency of the Mexican tertiary sector by looking at the differences in regional performance and also the geographical determinants of these differentials. We will evaluate if there are clear patterns of concentration, specialisation and regional efficiency because of its impact on regional competitiveness. The regional efficiency of the service sector in Mexico in the period of NAFTA operation will be analysed. We employ state level data to examine technical efficiency´s differentials across regions and their determinants. The methodology includes Data Envelopment Analysis to measure the efficiency of the third sector which is the dependent variable in a reduced form model that links regional performance with a number of proxies for various types of agglomeration economies such as specialisation, urbanisation and internal economies of scale. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p196&r=geo |
| By: | Miquel-Angel Garcia-Lopez |
| Abstract: | At the present time, most large cities in the world are polycentric and, at the same time, they are undergoing a process of employment and population decentralization. Gordon and Richardson (1996) argued that polycentricity is just an intermediate stage between monocentricity and a more unstructured, chaotic and amorphous location model, the dispersed city. Focusing their attention only on main centers, they neglected the role of transport infrastructure on urban spatial structure. On the contrary, New Urban Economics theoretical models (e.g. White, 1976; Steen, 1986; Sullivan, 1986) show that employment and population location is structured not only around main centers, but also around transport infrastructure. In a context of employment and population decentralization, transport infrastructure might be reinforcing its location role and a new location model might emerge, the accessibility city, in which employment and population continue to be concentrated but close to transport infrastructure and with more low-density settlements. For the case of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, we study the spatial distribution of population and its evolution between 1991 and 2006. The goal is to provide some insight into the location model discussion by taking into account the role of transport infrastructure and, therefore, considering the accessibility model as an alternative spatial configuration. Results reveal a multi-nodal distribution for population, with movements that are, indeed, away from the main centers but often into transport infrastructure. As a result, the accessibility city seems to be emerging. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p521&r=geo |
| By: | Egle Tafenau; Tiiu Paas |
| Abstract: | The interaction of inequality and growth and the direction of causality in this relationship have been an extensively discussed topic with several questions but without clear answers both in the theoretical and empirical literature. The current paper contributes mainly into the new economic geography (NEG) literature by focusing on the member states of the European Union. The purpose of the paper is to shed light on the effect of the economic development level and speed of growth on the relationship between economic growth and regional inequality. The research hypothesis of a significant interrelation between regional inequality and economic growth is discussed based on the models of NEG. The empirical part of the paper relies on the regional data of the 27 European Union member states at the classification level NUTS 3 over the period 1996–2006. The results of the empirical analysis allow us to conclude that regional inequality has a pro-cyclical character: regional inequality is as a rule higher in countries and time periods when economic growth is faster. However, this relationship varied between the countries of the EU-27 during the period under observation, depending on the development level. While in the Western European countries regional inequality and economic growth are negatively related, in the Eastern European countries regional inequality increases in the periods of fast economic growth. Relying on the NEG models, such differences can be explained by a different weight of internal and foreign markets in trade relations of countries and regions. Possibly the result also refers to disparities in congestion costs in Western and Eastern European core regions. We conclude that growth enhancing policy measures should be implemented at a different regional scale, depending on the level of economic development and growth of the countries. Growth supporting policies in poor countries should first of all concentrate on achieving sustainable national growth, not on reducing regional disparities. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p938&r=geo |
| By: | Florian Noseleit |
| Abstract: | Several theoretical approaches to explaining economic growth focus on externalities arising from interactions between economic agents. A frequently discussed source of such externalities is regional diversity of the industry structure. A large number of empirical studies support the argument that regional diversity can be beneficial to regional employment, innovation, and economic stability. It is not particularly surprising that diversity in the industry structure can be assumed to depend, in part, on the activity of new businesses. To date, however, little is known about the roles and paths new businesses take in the diversification of the industry structure. The central questions that this paper attempts to answer are how the market selection process influences the diversity of entries and how start-up activity influences diversity in the region and beyond. For an analysis of diversity patterns, we use regional data for West Germany over a 27-year period that includes specifics about employment at the industry level and allows us to distinguish and follow entry cohorts over time. Compared with the large amount of literature analyzing whether diversity or specialization is conducive to regional development, the literature discussing trends of regional diversification is rather limited. The preliminary results of this study can be summarized as follows. On the whole, regional diversity moderately increased over the last decades. Regional diversity and region size are related via an inverse u-shape. Establishment scale is negatively related to diversity. In addition, evidence supports that regional diversity increases with the number of entries but decreases with the number of exits. Modest specialization is positively associated. Certain empirical regularities for the role of entries are: Employment diversity in entries is increasing over time at the national level, while diversity at the regional level is decreasing on average. This antipodal development of diversity can be explained by a market selection favoring a diverse set of specializations at the regional level. Despite the decrease in regional diversity in entry cohorts over time, these entries contribute to an increase in total regional diversity due to a selection within entry cohorts that substantially differs from the existing regional industry structure. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1117&r=geo |
| By: | Apostolos Baltzopoulos; Anders Broström |
| Abstract: | The presence of universities in a region has been found to be an important factor for regional economic growth. In search for the specific explanations of this phenomenon, the connection between universities and locally based entrepreneurship has attracted considerable attention. We investigate how universities may affect regional entrepreneurship through the localisation decisions of entrepreneurial alumni. Empirically, we use data on the background of all 35 187 young individuals who founded start-up firms in Sweden in the period 2003-2005, a third of whom attended a university, to estimate whether the choice of where to pursue tertiary education studies had significant impact on the location of their firm. Our results suggest that even when controlling for the spatial history of the individual founder, individuals have an increased propensity to set up in the region where they studied. This effect is found to substitute for both urbanisation economies and localisation economies as drivers of regional-level entrepreneurship. Thus, our analysis provides evidence on how universities affect regional economic development that complements the strong focus on spin-off activities by university researchers in previous studies. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1519&r=geo |
| By: | Stefan Luethi; Alain Thierstein; Michael Bentlage |
| Abstract: | We assume that the territory of Germany is experiencing a reorganisation of functional division of labour in favour of the knowledge economy. New forms of network economies and functional differentiation between cities and towns can be observed. The increasing importance of emerging network economies has introduced new lines of thinking about space, place and scale that interprets regions as unbounded, relational spaces. The key aim of the paper is to set out a theoretical context and then to empirically investigate the functional polycentric patterns and interlocking networks of Advanced Producer Services (APS) and High-Tech firms on different spatial scales. We start from a conceptual background that brings together the location behaviour of multi-branch multi-location firms with a world city network approach. The analytical building blocks are 338 Functional Urban Areas in Germany, including adjacent agglomerations in Germany’s neighbouring countries. Based on this methodological approach, the paper looks at the extent to which the functional urban hierarchy within the German space economy is associated with different special scales and economic sub-sectors. Interim results provide evidence that the German territory can be regarded as a hierarchically organized space economy in which only few agglomerations establish substantial international connectivities and economic strength. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p120&r=geo |
| By: | Argentino Pessoa |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the most important theoretical foundations of the spatial competitiveness conception, dealing with three levels of competitiveness: the country, the region and the tourism destination. Consequently, it draws attention to the main aspects that such concepts of competitiveness must include and it links the regional competitiveness with the related concept of cluster. Therefore, section 2 reviews the key aspects of competitiveness at the first level highlighting the role of the main forces acting at the national level. Section 3 extends the concept to the regional level, highlighting the critical aspects that must be considered when policy tries to increase the competitiveness of a particular region. Section 4 analyses the possibilities of extending the competitiveness concept to tourism destinations. Next, the paper analyses the literature on policy advice and discuss the inconsistency between the theory and the policy designed to promote regional competitiveness. Finally, the paper presents some concluding remarks on regional policy applied to depressed regions. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1148&r=geo |
| By: | Kingsley E. Haynes |
| Abstract: | Business support programs, represented by business incubators (BIs) and small business development centers (SBDCs), play an important role in assisting new or small firms, nurturing entrepreneurial culture, and fostering regional economic growth. For that reason, the location of these programs may interest regional planners or economic practitioners who have the incentive to create or attract these programs. Our previous studies have found that the presence of both types of business support programs is positively associated with the level of agglomeration and negatively associated with the level of business development. It is however unclear whether the local knowledge context may influence the local presence of BIs or SBDCs. This paper examines the role of knowledge in shaping the geography of BIs and SBDCs in the US using county-level data. Human capital, the university, and high technology are used as the proxies for knowledge. Their effects on the presence of BIs and SBDCs are investigated in binomial logistic regressions. We also control other county-specific characteristics by including three common factors derived via factor analysis from 27 demographic, social, and economic variables. This study highlights business support programs as the link between regional innovation systems and small or new firms. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1499&r=geo |
| By: | Raffaele Paci; Emanuela Marrocu |
| Abstract: | Firms productivity is crucially influenced by knowledge spillovers generated either by other firms located nearby or by direct contacts with consumers or by foreign demand in the case of traded products. In this paper we propose a new channel of efficiency-enhancing knowledge diffusion, which can be exploited by local firms to extract relevant information on consumer preferences: direct contacts with tourism flows. Tourists have the peculiar feature of being external consumers, who directly arrive to the destination region and this represents a remarkable advantage for the local enterprises, as the latter can exploit the new information and increase the overall efficiency level of the local economy. More specifically, we examine, within a spatial estimation framework, tourism flows as determinants of regional total factor productivity, controlling also for other intangible factors (such as human, social and technological capital) and for the degree of accessibility. We apply the analysis to a sample of 199 European regions belonging to the EU15 member countries, plus Switzerland and Norway. The empirical results show that tourism flows enhance regional efficiency and that a positive role is also played by intangible assets, infrastructures and spatial spillovers. Keywords: tourism, information, customer knowledge, total factor productivity, European regions JEL: L83, D83, O33, R10 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p493&r=geo |
| By: | Marta R. Casanova; Vicente Orts |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we evaluate the spatial location patterns of Spanish manufacturing firms and we assess the different tendencies to cluster in each industry relative to the whole of manufacturing. To do this, we use a distance-based method (Marcon and Puech, 2003; Duranton and Overman, 2005), more concretely the Ripley’s K function, which measures concentration by counting the average number of neighbours of each firm within a circle of a given radius. This method allows us to treat space as continuous, analysing simultaneously multiple spatial scales and avoiding the shortcomings of the administrative scale. In addition, we employ a polygonal envelope to improve the delimitation of our area of study, substituting the rectangular shape used by other authors and thus avoiding the nuisance of empty spaces. We apply this method to Spanish manufacturing sectors at two-digit and four-digit level, isolating like this the different behaviours of spatial distribution of each subsector caused by 'spillovers' characteristic of each activity and also preventing compensation effects due to previous aggregation. Furthermore, we examine the co-localization between horizontally-linked and vertically-linked industries to assess the importance of these spillovers across industries and, finally, we try to answer what type of establishment, depending on its size, is the driver of the Spanish industrial agglomeration. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1227&r=geo |
| By: | Uwe Blien; Van Phan |
| Abstract: | 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall there is still a strong division between the economies and labour markets of eastern and western Germany. In the last few years, however, unemployment has been reduced especially in the East, even in times of economic crisis. Within eastern Germany a strong variation of labour market situations is visible, which has been relatively stable in time. A centre-periphery-structure can be understood by those approaches of regional economics which have the property of path dependency like the New Economic Geography. In the paper the development of unemployment is analysed in a spatial econometrics framework which uses a three-equations background (in the spirit of Elhorst). The results show convergence processes (beta- and sigma-convergence) which are not very strong. An industry structure with an emphasis on manufacturing helps to reduce unemployment. In the analysis spatial autocorrelation is revealed of being significant. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p935&r=geo |
| By: | Michaela Fuchs; Udo Brixy |
| Abstract: | Empirical research on agglomeration and regional economic growth puts high emphasis on the impact of specialization, diversity, and competition on regional employment dynamics (Glaeser et al. 1992, Henderson et al. 1995, Blien et al. 2006, Fuchs 2009). However, Beugelsdijk (2006) and Raspe/van Oort (2008) argue that this relationship should most profoundly hold at the micro or firm level. This paper centres on the labour demand of individual plants and assesses the influence of regional features in direct contrast to plant-specific characteristics as well as conventional labour-demand determinants. Hence, it contributes to the sparse literature on the importance of regional character-istics for firm performance and additionally integrates research from industrial as well as labour economics. The analysis is based on the IAB Establishment Panel, a comprehensive data set on German plants. For the years from 2004 to 2008 it encompasses observations on roughly 8,000 plants. The regional variables are added on the NUTS3-level. First econometric results confirm the basic hypotheses derived from labour-demand theory: wages exert a significantly negative and output a positive influence on the number of employees. Among the plant-specific characteristics, it is mainly plant size, exporting behaviour and R&D / innovation activities that foster employment. There are also distinctive differences regarding the single sectors. Last but not least, the regional environment plays a decisive role for plant-level labour demand. The size of the region the plant is located in, the degree of sectoral concentration as well as of competition within a sector have a positive and highly significant impact. By contrast, accessibility to highways, specialization, and diversity seem to be of minor relevance |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p243&r=geo |
| By: | Jung Hun Yang; Dick Ettema; Koen Frenken; Frank van Oort; Evert-Jan Visser |
| Abstract: | The present paper presents a geosimulation agent-based model of firm development that is based on firms’ behavioural rules. The model describes growth, closure, spin-offs and relocation of firms in 21 industrial sectors in the Netherlands, based on a dataset of all individual firms in the Netherlands. An important aspect of the model is the potential interaction that exists between firms, which is represented by various agglomeration indicators. The indicators represent the effect of the distance to other firms, which may have implications fro market potential, agglomeration advantages and congestion/competition. By including positive and negative attraction effects a proper description of concentration and deconcentration tendencies is achieved. The interactions may take place on difference scales, depending on the type of effect (agglomeration advantage, competition for space) and economic sector. The interactions affect growth, closure and spin-off of the individual firms in the model. The model is applied to simulate the distribution of economic development in the Netherlands during a ten year period (1998-2007). The simulation results are then compared to existing 2007 data. This comparison confirms the effectiveness of the model. Simulation carried out with and without various positive and negative agglomeration factors indicate that including agglomeration factors into the model seriously adds to the quality of predictions. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1016&r=geo |
| By: | Christian Dreger; Georg Erber; Daniela Glocker |
| Abstract: | The accumulation of the human capital stock plays a key role to explain the economic performance across regions. However, empirical evidence for this claim has been not very convincing, probably due to low quality of the data. This paper provides a robustness analysis of alternative human capital measures available for EU regions. Examining the spatial dimension can offer new insights. Most strikingly, the amount of information is tremendously enlarged. Studies based on country level data are based on heterogeneous economies to obtain a high number of observations. The heterogeneity is not fully captured by fixed effects. As the EU or at least the old and the new member states are more homogeneous geographical areas, the quality of the results should be enhanced. In addition to univariate measures of human capital, composite indicators are discussed. To examine the robustness of the results, different aggregation methods are considered. The reliability of alternative indicators is explored by the Krueger and Lindahl (2001) approach. Indicators based on wage regressions are also presented, see Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin (1997) and Gershuny and Kun (2002). Due to data availability, the latter analysis is carried out for only for German regions. The analysis shows a significant impact of construction techniques on the quality of indicators. While composite indicators and labour income measures point to the same direction, their correlation is not very high. Moreover, popular indicators should be applied with caution. Schooling and human ressources in science and technology can only explain some part, but not the bulk of the experience. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p337&r=geo |
| By: | Ana Angulo; Fernando Lopéz; Jésus Mur |
| Abstract: | The seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) equations are a traditional multivariate econometric formulation employed in very different fields including, obviously, spatial analysis. The basis of the approach is very well known due to the initial works of Zellner (1962), Theil (1971), Malinvaud (1970), Schmidt (1976) and Dwivedi and Srivastava (1978). In this paper, we address the case of a SUR model that involves spatial effects, under the configuration of a given number of equations, G, a finite number of crosssections, T, and a large number of spatial units, R. The problem that we pose is testing for the presence of spatial effects, as in Mur and López (2008), and to select the most adequate spatial model for the data, as in Mur et al (2010). Following these papers, we also assume a maximum-likelihood framework that facilitates the obtaining of simple Lagrange Multipliers, with good behaviour in small-sized samples. Then, we focus on the assumption of constancy (among equations, between cross-sections) of the parameters of spatial dependence. In a standard framework, these coefficients are allowed to vary between equations but not in time. In general terms, this is an unnecessary assumption to start with the econometric modelling. For this reason, we extend the discussion to the problem of the instability of the coefficients of crosssectional dependence, both in a spatial dimension and among equations. We present the results of a small Monte Carlo experiment to study the behaviour of the Lagrange Multipliers developed in order to analyze the assumption of parameter stability. Finally, an application of these techniques to the case of the European regional employment, at NUTS II level and disaggregated by sectors of activity, in the period 1980 to 2008, is also included. We specify a SUR model where each equation corresponds to a sector of activity. Provisional results indicate that there exist strong symptoms of instability in the spatial structure of the equations, although this structure appears to be stable in time. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p487&r=geo |
| By: | Thomas Papathomas |
| Abstract: | The population distribution in the Greek region shows strong spatial disparities. The depopulation of entire areas, coupled with the excessive population growth of the two largest cities (Athens and Thessaloniki) as well as the intense spatial disparities within the cities are significant challenges in managing our country; the main instrument to achieve this management is spatial planning. At the same time, the population is a variable which comprises a deciding factor in the procedure of spatial planning. Exploring the characteristics of the population of a region and predicting the evolution is not an end in itself for analysis, their usefulness, however, lies on the fact that part of the characteristics of urban space is determined by size, demographic and social characteristics of the population concentrated in this space. The purpose of this work is to study how the population variable is included in spatial planning. In order to answer to the above question we will study the technical specifications of the Greek plans trying to understand and specify which characteristics of the population are considered in the design and how. Also, if there are differences between the two main stages of spatial planning (analysis phase, final proposal phase) in relation to the population study. We will study 4 specific cases of randomly chosen masterplans (the corresponding plans of the Greek legislation) in order to try to verify the early feedback which will come up. The conclusions are interesting and highlight some of the weaknesses and shortcomings of the Greek plans and the Greek system of design. Finally, some suggestions are presented which we believe they can improve the current weaknesses. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1171&r=geo |
| By: | Martin Rosenfeld; Albrecht Kauffmann |
| Abstract: | In many European regions, globalization and interregional competition have resulted in a collapse of old traditional industries and strong economic development problems. Policymakers in some of these regions are trying to change the path of development in the direction to attract businesses from the field of tourism, in many cases with the help of money from the national government or the EU-level. The general question is whether this strategy could be successful. The paper reports on an empirical study for the German state of Saxony. In many Saxonian regions, following the German re-unification, a strong de-industrialization has taken place. Since the 1990s, in Saxony, the field of tourism had been one major sector for creating new local infrastructure. E. g. in areas with exhausted opencast workings, where the mining industry had formerly been the main source of income, policymakers have begun to change the region into a new lake district and to build infrastructure like waterways, marinas etc. Millions of Euros have been spent to build new bike paths throughout the state or to construct completely new local tourist attractions. The paper’s first section gives an overview on tourism industry in Saxony and on public investment in infrastructure for supporting this sector. The second section has the task to identify specific location factors which are relevant for tourism industry. This is done on the base of existing theoretical and empirical studies. The third section is evaluating the impact of public investments for supporting tourism industry in different parts of Saxony; this is based on quantitative data and qualitative interviews with local experts. One major result is that infrastructure in the field of tourism may only have positive effects on regional development if a region is well-equipped with relevant complementary factors, e. g. with a service-oriented mentality within the population. In many cases, the grants from the national to the local level have been spent for infrastructure which is mainly used by the local population, not by tourists. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1179&r=geo |
| By: | Peter Svensson; Magnus Klofsten; Henry Etzkowitz |
| Abstract: | What the future holds for the industrial cities of the past is a life and death question for many municipalities. Researchers, policy makers and ordinary citizens deal with issues related to developing appropriate strategy for renewing a declining industrial city. Searching the industrial landscape for an existing firm to relocate or establish a branch plant, with an offer of subsidies, is typically the first idea for life support. Developing a new economic base from advanced research is often the next thought for resuscitation. In this paper we study how a small city region, formerly dependent upon old labour-intensive industries, has developed a knowledge-based renewal strategy inspired by ideas emanating from a superseded local economy. Prior research has shown that there are four stages of development in a knowledge-intensive region; inception, implementation, consolidation, and renewal, and at the first stage government and academia take initiative (Etzkowitz & Klofsten, 2005). Later on, the initiative is transferred to industrial actors that identify and exploit the opportunities of the new knowledge. In this process knowledge input is a central aspect of regional development, and stakeholders are active in constructing assets for knowledge production (Cooke & Leydesdorff, 2006; Cooke et al, 2007). We further develop the inception phase of the model through of a triple helix “spaces” strategy for regional renewal, with particular focus in this paper on the consensus space. A longitudinal case study is used to explicate the dynamics of change among university-industry-government actors, including consensus building within the city and with its neighbour city. Our study show that the keys to success were (1) cross-institutional entrepreneurship, aggregating regional and national resources to realize a bespoke locally generated strategy as opposed to the adoption of the usual list of high-tech hot-topics e.g. IT, biotech, alternative energy and (2) striking a balance between intra-regional competition and collaboration in order to achieve common objectives and avoid stasis arising from hyper-competitiveness. Comparisons are made to other relevant cases to infer a theoretical model of regional renewal through hybridization of old and new industrial and knowledge elements. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1513&r=geo |
| By: | Janno Reiljan |
| Abstract: | Keywords: regional economic development; empirical assessment methods; European Union The objective of current article is to assess EU regional economic development imbalance and its change, by implementing an indicator system of regional development disparities. The quantitative measurement problems of regional development imbalance have not received sufficient attention. Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1991, 1995) have shown the properties of two complicated indicators of regional development imbalance dynamics – β-convergence and δ-convergence that are most widely used in empirical analyses. The EU official statistical assessment of regional economic development imbalance refers to the dispersion of regional GDP per inhabitant. This approach is based on a different methodology. We determined a number of additional regional development imbalance indicators and tackeld the following research tasks: * analysis of general basics and formation of comprerensive indicator system for assessment of regional disparities and its trends in economic development; * empirical analysis of imbalance and its dynamics between economic development of EU member countries on the base of the comprehensive indicator system using GDP in market prices and PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) prices; * eliminating of the price change impact from assessments of regional economic development imbalance dynamics. Our results explain the absolute and relative regional development imbalance and its dynamics in 1996-2008 in EU as a whole and in “old” and “new” member state groups. Regional development imbalances point to improvement necessities of quantitative measurement of regional economic development imbalance and its dynamics. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p772&r=geo |
| By: | Geraldine Ryan; Bernadette Power; Noreen McCarthy; Paul Braidford |
| Abstract: | Objectives: Business transfers are posing a particular problem for several European countries as the age distribution of business owners rises and as the number of firms transferred within families’ declines. This paper explores firm, market, and regional differences in firms which are expected to be transferred in the British Isles against those that are expected to be disposed of. It also examines whether there are regional differences in the types of businesses which are expected to be transferred across the British Isles. Prior Work: Previous research in this area has primarily examined intergenerational succession in family businesses (Bennedsen et al. 2006), while the research into management-buyouts and trade-sales has focused on the entrepreneur’s mode of entry (Parker and Van Praag, 2006). Martin et al. (2002) finds evidence that spatial differentiation exists in the vulnerability of firms to age related business transfer failure. In this paper we examine whether businesses located in relatively more economically vibrant regions within the British Isles, whether due to urban economies (Gordon and McCann 2005) or agglomeration economies (Parr 2002) or the level of entrepreneurial talent (Markley, 2006) in the region, have a lower probability of a business transfer failure. Approach: Interview evidence on the expected end-game strategy of entrepreneurs facing the risk of age related transfer failure was obtained from firms in a number of regions in the British Isles, namely the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England (800 cases). A model is developed which predicts how firm, market and regional characteristics influence whether a firm is expected to be transferred or not. Preliminary Results: Entrepreneurs who expect to dispose of the assets of the business on their retirement have a significantly lower probability of having a high level of entrepreneurial talent in the region and a higher probability of having a high level of GVA per head in the region than entrepreneurs who expect to transfer their businesses. A higher level of entrepreneurial talent (as measured by stock of businesses per resident) and a lower of GVA per head are more likely in rural regions. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1094&r=geo |
| By: | Nicolas Bonnet |
| Abstract: | We address the role of innovation networks on growth of territories in the Canadian space (TER WALL et BOSCHMA, 2009). We rely on an analysis of labor market areas for the period 1996 - 2008 on the basis of patent applications filed jointly by several inventors so as to develop the networks of cooperation. An analysis of such networks on the basis of these geography areas can provide some additional explanatories on the core-periphery model, which appears between the labor market areas that innovate and those that develop economically. The working hypothesis is therefore as follows. If technological change is undeniably the macro-economic factors of growth (ROMER, 1990), the level of flow of knowledge spillover between cities and particularly the degree of centrality of each of them within the collaborative network, has a differential impact on local economic development between urban areas (GORDON et McCANN, 2000). This working hypothesis is based on the observation that innovation at the local level does not necessarily lead to economic development of territories in which it operates. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1571&r=geo |
| By: | Marta Portela; Isabel Neira |
| Abstract: | Theories of economic growth at the regional and national level, have expanded the traditional production function of the Solow model towards a wide function that collects conditioning factors of labour productivity, measured by R & D expenditure, the number of patents, the human capital, the social capital or entrepreneurship rates. This set of factors have been developed by authors like Westlund (2006) and Koo and Kim (2009). The aim of this paper is to analyze regional growth in the EU, considering the differences between the EU15 and its eastern regions, using such set of factors and taking into account the limitations of existing data for this type of analysis. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1160&r=geo |
| By: | Stamatis Kalogirou |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to define and test local versions of standard correlation coefficients in statistical analysis. This research is motivated by the increasing number of applications using local versions of exploratory and explanatory spatial data analysis methods. A common example of the latter is local regression. Methods such as the Geographically Weighted Regression argue that it is necessary to check spatial non-stationarity in the relationships between a geographic phenomenon and its determinants. This is because the response to a stimulus could vary across space. For example the relationship between education level and unemployment could vary across the EU regions. Local regression claims to account for local relationships that may be hidden or missed when a global regression is applied. However, the statistical inference in local regression methods is still an open field for basic research. In this paper a local version of Pearson correlation coefficient is defined and tested in spatial data. By doing this a simple tool for statistical inference is provided assisting a more careful interpretation of the results of a local regression model. Furthermore, this could be a technique for testing the existence of local correlation among two variables representing spatial data in the absence of a global correlation and vice versa. The application of this technique includes pairs of usually correlated variables, such as income and high levels of education as well as not correlated variables. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p529&r=geo |
| By: | Guilherme Resende |
| Abstract: | The goal of this paper is to carry out two outcome evaluations of the northeast regional fund (FNE) in Brazil. With this aim, the paper assembles two types of outcome evaluation often implemented separately in the evaluation literature. The results of the micro- and macro-evaluations show that although there is a positive and statistically significant impact of the FNE industrial loans on job creation at the (micro) firm level, this impact is still too limited to have any significant effect on GDP per capita growth at the municipal (macro) level and thus reduce the regional inequalities in Brazil. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p853&r=geo |
| By: | Silvia Loddo |
| Abstract: | The lack of convergence across Italian Regions has been widely cited as an incontrovertible proof of failure of Cohesion policy. This paper aims to provide a twofold contribution to the debate on the effectiveness of these policies in Italy. Firstly, we provide an up-to-date view of convergence across Italian regions by focussing on the period covered by regional development policies carried out by EU. Poorer regions in Italy have indeed caught up with the richer regions over the period 1994-2004 and much of this convergence process has occurred towards region-specific steady states. Secondly, we consider Structural Funds as a conditioning variable in the convergence equation by using recently available data on expenditure implemented during the Second and the Third Planning Period. Our panel estimates point to a positive and significant impact of the Structural Funds on regional convergence in Italy over the period 1994-2004. When the Structural Funds are considered individually we find that the expenditure allocated by ERDF has medium term positive and significant returns while support to agriculture has short-term positive effects on growth which wane quickly. Finally, our results cast some doubt both on the (i) distributive efficiency of resources allocated by ESF and (ii) on the effectiveness of the intervention policies in support to education, Human capital and employment. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1231&r=geo |
| By: | Ho Yeon KIM |
| Abstract: | Recently, the so-called creative industry is gaining attention as a new engine of regional economic growth. Using this new industrial classification, many countries are starting to promote the cultural creation activities with the purpose of seeking out new directions in regional development. The synergy effects can also be attained by promoting the traditional sectors to the creative industry. This concept is useful not only for mega cities like Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and Shanghai, but also for smaller local cities such as Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, Busan, Incheon, Tianjin, and Yantai. Since capital and human resources are rather limited in these local cities, applying the said concept can exert newfound energy for urban development. Although there is an old industrial culture of manufacturing embedded in Kitakyushu City, for example, the facilities and institutes of some other cultures and sports have been promoted separately. In order to reap the full benefit, it is needed to tear down the barriers between them, and combine the existing industries, facilities, and support organizations in a more systematic way. In this paper, we will explore these aspects by using census data as a general guide and interviews with selected cultural and sports organizations as well as entrepreneurs as a case study. Specifically, we will investigate the city planning practice and growth policy regarding cultivation of creative industry, and investigate possible cooperation among the cities in Pan Yellow-Sea region based on cultural or sports activities. Regarding general study, we recount the industrial classification of existing census data according to the definition of the creative industry by the UK (see London’s Creative Sector: 2004 Update and Creative Industries Economic Estimates Statistical Bulletin), adding the tourism industry. Based on this definition, we can clarify the trends of creative industry at the country level and city level of Japan, China and South Korea after 1990. It would reveal the true potential of the creative industry as a long-term facilitator of the regional economy. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1484&r=geo |
| By: | Esa Storhammar; Timo Tohmo |
| Abstract: | ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to clarify what factors affect the innovation activity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and especially the effect of regional factors. Innovations are seen as central phenomena on both micro and macro levels in economy. However, we know little about the formation, development and diffusion of innovations in different milieus. The different types of branch and enterprise structure might be the essential factor that accounts for regional differences in innovation activities. Many studies show remarkable differences between branches. Additionally, the resources of firms give an unequal starting point for innovation activities. Our study observed that the differences between regions were smaller than anticipated. It also found the innovation profiles in different areas to be fairly convergent. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p240&r=geo |
| By: | Javier Garcia; Marti Parellada; Néstor Duch |
| Abstract: | The challenges posed by globalization have led to a rapid increase in the demand for higher education and, at the same time, many countries are earmarking more resources and efforts to foster their population’s skills level and knowledge. Nowadays higher education is playing a crucial role in countries’ economic development. In fact, higher education is perceived as being sufficient to allow countries to compete in a globalised economy and enhance leadership in knowledge sectors. In the last decades many countries have increased the incentives for and pressures on universities to become more involved in their regions. In response, the universities have developed the so-called Third Mission whereby they collaborate with its milieu in the more direct way. The objective of this paper is to know whether the university presence contributes to encourage the regional economic outcomes. Exploiting the geographic and temporal variation in the foundation of Spanish regional universities after to 1980, we use difference-in-difference approach to estimate its effect on regional economy. The data base includes information for the total Spanish public university system. Our paper contributes to the literature on universities and economic growth, adding more specific data related with university activity. We find little evidence that university presence increases the regional economic growth. We also estimate the effect of the university activity on the creation of knowledge spillover. However, the results vary widely across different regions. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p911&r=geo |
| By: | Veronika Killer; Kay W. Axhausen; Christian Holz-Rau; Dennis Guth |
| Abstract: | This study points out the effect of road infrastructure improvement between 1970 and 2005/06 and the resulting change of travel time in Germany and Switzerland. Reconsidering the interaction between the transportation system and land use, the paper contributes to the ongoing discussion about induced travel and infrastructure capacity. The impact of highway capacity expansion on land use has been studied worldwide focusing on urban areas. This study goes one step further. We detect changes in suburban and rural areas by this national comparison. The generation of a historical travel time dataset applies a method developed for Switzerland in previous studies and is adjusted for Germany according to its political, structural and topographical situation. The method is based on a historical network and estimated mean car speeds on different road types varying between densely or sparsely populated areas. Travel time matrices between all municipalities in Germany and Switzerland are calculated and validated by a regional comparison. Three indexes are developed to detect regional effects of travel time. The results are regionally segmented by a spatial cluster analyses named Getis-Ord’s Gi* statistics. The spatial overview of the three travel time indexes takes into account the national and regional level. The historical travel time dataset is successfully validated. This useful data is needed for later investigation on commuting behaviour. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1017&r=geo |
| By: | M¬™ Jesus Santa Maria Beneyto; JosÈ Miguel Giner PÈrez |
| Abstract: | In the last decades numerous studies on industrial districts have proved how concentrations of small firms located in the same area and specialized in the production of the same products contribute to the competitiveness and the economic development of this type of areas. In the recent years several works have emphasized the innovative capacity generated in these areas, in which the proximity of related industries has sustained processes of generation and diffusion of knowledge. Specifically, the marshallian concept of industrial atmosphere, the continuous linkages among firms and the processes of cooperation and competition between firms and local agents are elements that can generate competitive advantages for the firms located inside an industrial district. In addition, these elements also promote the generation of specific knowledge and localized knowledge spillovers and innovative processes. In the plastics industry, the high level of competitiveness, the high level of diversification and the flexibility to attend the demand of different industrial sectors are factors that can explain the great innovation effort and the sector dynamism to search for new business opportunities. The aim of this work is to analyze the characteristics of the innovative plastics firms in Spain and to explore if the belonging to an industrial district promote the innovative processes and increase firms’ innovation performance. To achieve this objective, the results from a survey made it to a sample of plastics firms in Spain will be analyzed. In addition, this work investigates if there are differences in the characteristics of the innovative firms depending on their location inside or outside an industrial district. This empirical analysis contributes to enhance the knowledge about the innovative processes carried out in the industrial districts and provides evidence about the impact of the spatial agglomeration of specialized firms on the innovative capacity. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p588&r=geo |
| By: | Roger Bivand |
| Abstract: | Ecologists are often interested in studying the relationship between species and the environment, and between changes in the environment and changes in species occurrence. They consider that the spatial scales of the data generating processes for both the environmental and species variables matter, and that observed spatial dependence may be a 'red herring', because the process scales of variables have not been captured appropriately. In studying regional growth, one is often obliged to use administrative entities that may not correspond to the scales of data generating processes. The paper will review the red herring controversy in macroecology, and relate it to the discovery of spatial regimes in connection with the club-convergence hypothesis. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p482&r=geo |
| By: | Angelos Liontakis; Christos T. Papadas; Irene Tzouramani |
| Abstract: | Traditionally, the analysis of regional economic convergence is based on the notions of β-convergence and σ-convergence. However, both of these approaches have several drawbacks and limitations. To overcome these difficulties, we apply a more recent non-parametric approach in the convergence literature, which differs from the other non parametric kernel estimator approaches. This is the stochastic dominance approach, which is traditionally implemented in investment decision making. Stochastic dominance analysis has many advantages, relative to the traditional methods for convergence analysis, as it is based on minimal assumptions and it is not bound to a certain distribution. Additionally, it produces more evidence about the shape and the evolution of the regional per capita income distribution, rather than a simple measure of dispersion as the σ-convergence approach does. Furthermore, it supports statistical significance tests for the identified tendency towards convergence. Thus, stochastic dominance analysis offers the possibility to examine the whole distribution of per capita income and also to test for polarization. In this study, we investigate the existence and the nature of per capita income convergence between the Greek NUTS-III regions. Specifically, our data covers the 1995-2006 period and the 51 Greek perfectures. Moreover, convergence is studied using the traditional parametric approaches, and the results are compared to those of the stochastic dominance approach. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1188&r=geo |
| By: | Laura Resmini; Laura Casi |
| Abstract: | This study aims at identifying the main determinants of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the European regions. The theory of the determinants of FDI deals with the question on why firms become multinationals. Partial equilibrium studies suggest that in so doing firms try to internalize trade costs and externalities from firms specific assets as well as to take advantages from location characteristics. General equilibrium models turn the attention to motivations for investing abroad, distinguishing between market seeking and efficiency seeking FDI. While the former are more interested in local markets, the latter are looking for lower-cost inputs and strategic assets that help them to become not only more efficient but also more competitive. According to this theoretical background, the most important determinants of FDI are market size and potential, factor costs, agglomeration externalities, labour skills, trade barriers and incentives. However, the empirical literature is mainly based on evidence drawn from data at industry or country level. Therefore, we need to investigate whether and to what extent those variables maintain their capacity of attraction at regional level, too. At this purpose, we argue that, at regional level, the capacity to attract FDI is the result, on the one hand, of the relative performance of a region within the country it belongs to, and, on the other hand, of the relative performance of the country it belongs to in Europe. In order to achieve our research objectives, we use original data on the number of foreign investments over the 2005-07 period disaggregated by regions of the EU27 and by sectors. Our empirical analysis is divided into two interrelated parts. We first perform a detailed analysis of the location determinants of foreign investments at both regional and country level. Then, we try to understand whether and what extent each region’s capacity to attract FDI is enhanced or hampered by the performance of the country it belongs to by interacted regional and country variables. Once identified the “national” and the “regional” components of factors able to attract FDI, more effective FDI promotion policies can be implemented at national, regional and sectoral levels. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p466&r=geo |
| By: | Erik Jenelius; Lars-Göran Mattsson |
| Abstract: | Disruptions in the road transport system can have severe consequences for accessibility and transport costs. These impacts vary depending on in which regions they occur (regional importance), and users may be affected differently depending on where they travel (regional exposure). Some disruptions (caused by, e.g., car crashes, minor landslides and floods) affect only single road links, whereas others (e.g., heavy snowfall, storms and wildfires) disable extended areas of the road network. In this paper we systematically analyze the vulnerability of road networks under both kinds of disruptions. We apply the analysis approach to the Swedish road network using travel demand and network data from the Swedish transport modeling system Sampers. We investigate to what extent regional disparities in vulnerability depend on the network structure and travel and location patterns. For single link failures, we find that the total impacts (measured as travel time increases) depend strongly on the network density and the average traffic load in the region, whereas the average impact per traveler in a region is largely determined by the network density and the average user travel time. For area-covering disruptions, the study shows that the impacts depend strongly on the amount of internal, outbound and inbound travel demand of the affected area itself. As a result, the worst-case impact per traveler in a region is largely determined by the concentration of the population to one central location. Our findings, which should be universal for most road networks of similar scale, reveal that the vulnerability to single link failures and spatially spread events display markedly different regional distributions. Furthermore, these regional disparities stem from fundamental properties of the transport system and the population distribution. Hence, we believe that resource allocation for reducing vulnerability is more an issue of preparedness and mitigation than redundancy-providing infrastructure investments. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p448&r=geo |
| By: | D'Artis Kancs; Olga Ivanova; Andries Brandsma; Ben Gardiner |
| Abstract: | One of the major constrains of modelling economic integration at regional level is the availability of economic data. Whereas national accounts and international trade data are largely based on actual observations, regional data are generated by a variety of methods using relatively few real data points. The present paper reviews alternative methods to do so. We illustrate their empirical implementation by the experience of building a prototype for the regional economic model (Rhomolo) that is being developed for the European Commission. We show that linking Rhomolo to the datasets of models such as Transtools and E3ME greatly enhances the operability of the model, leaving open the question of how much real regional content is reflected in the simulations. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p500&r=geo |
| By: | Sabine Sedlacek |
| Abstract: | The question of how universities do stimulate regional economic development is mainly inquired in studies focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship. In these studies universities are seen as important actors within regional innovation systems (RIS). Within these RIS universities fulfill besides their training and education (human capital) function a knowledge production and transfer function. Studies on sustainable regional development are additionally focusing more and more on governance issues and the role of different stakeholders within governance networks and their ability to contribute to a more sustainable development at the regional level. Universities are important governance stakeholders, since their administrators and faculty members are eligible partners for regional governments. Here it is mainly their research capacity which is often used for expertise, e.g. to contribute to regional economic development plans. The role of institutions in fostering sustainable development at the regional level gained, especially in Europe, major importance since multi-level governance (MLG) is the number one concept in the European Union regional policy. The focus on institutional cooperation and how this network cooperation leads to a more effective implementation of sustainable development is the subject of several research agendas focusing on governance for sustainable development. There is a lack of knowledge and expertise with respect to the links between certain institutions and the broader society, and hence their ability to foster sustainable regional development. In this regard universities can serve as facilitators between societal and other institutional actors. In order to fill this gap the question of how the sustainable policy implementation process could be supported by universities acting in partnership with other institutional actors will be addressed. We will introduce an analytical framework which would allow us to test hypotheses extracted out of existing theoretical and empirical literature about universities as key actors in advancing sustainable development. The goal is to filter both factors enhancing sustainable development and obstacles and barriers that are hindering sustainable development. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p851&r=geo |
| By: | Oscar Bajo-Rubio; Carmen Diaz-Roldan |
| Abstract: | The balance of payments can act as a constraint to the rate of growth of output, on putting a limit to the growth in the level of demand to which supply can adapt. This effect might be even stronger for regional economies, presumably more integrated among them. In this paper, we examine this issue for the case of the Spanish regions over the period 1988-2008, and calculate their balance of payments-constrained growth rates. By comparing these balance of payments-constrained growth rates with the actual growth rates, we would be able to assess whether the balance of payments has acted as a constraint to economic growth for the Spanish regional economies in the period analyzed. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p86&r=geo |
| By: | Jichung Yang; Daeyoung Park; Changmu Jung |
| Abstract: | In this paper, the spatial distributions of firm and entrepreneurship were investigated in relation with the productivity. To analyze the effect of manufacturing firms' detailed distribution patterns on the productivity of manufacturing industries, micro geographic data were used, which avoids systematic problems relating scales and borders of box unit that is administrative territories. First of all, agglomeration distances for every sub-industries were estimated, that is spatial boundaries of localization effect. Three main variables relating spatial distribution patterns of firms in same industrial classification, that are the number of firms, the average distance to other firms and disperse index from standard deviation of firms' Euclidian coordinates, are computed from Euclidian coordinates of firms in the agglomeration boundaries. Also, we checked the relationship between Entrepreneurships and productivity. And mixed effects were checked. These tests were applied to an exhaustive manufacturing firms data-set of Korea including Seoul Metropolitan Area provided by NSO. We can predict that for most sub-industries, (i) the number of firms of the same industrial classification in the agglomeration boundary has positive effect on the productivity, (ii) the average distance to other firms has positive effect below the specific distance and negative effect beyond that, and (iii) the more disperse the firms are, productivity gets decreased |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1428&r=geo |
| By: | Hans Westlund; Kent Eliasson |
| Abstract: | Policies aiming at promoting entrepreneurship are in general formed on national levels, without any consideration to differences between urban and rural areas. Usually cities are provided with better and more modern infrastructure; cities have better supply of physical, financial and human capital and connected services, and cities have a more modern industrial structure in the sense that their shares of growing industry are higher. These circumstances indicate that policies for entrepreneurship, which in general are designed for urban areas, might not work as intended when they are implemented in rural areas. A first step to improving the efficiency of these policies could be to investigate the differences between cities and countryside regarding frequencies and types entrepreneurship. Based on a database containing socio-economic information on all residents in Sweden this paper examines a) The scope and structure of enterprise propensity in urban and rural areas respectively in Sweden. b) The importance of a number of attributes that may have an impact on individuals’ propensity to start an enterprise in the two area types. Besides total (active) populations of urban and rural areas, divisions are made in men and women, in age groups and in different manufacturing and service sectors. Variables on individual level being investigated are education, incomes and combination of incomes from various income sources. Variables on regional level being tested are population size and density, centers’ population density, average commuting distance, local employment level and demographics and relative density of firms. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1486&r=geo |
| By: | Jose Enrique Garcilazo; Joaquim Oliveira Martins |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the contribution of regional performance to aggregate growth in the OECD. We find a great degree of heterogeneity in the performance of large (TL2) and small (TL3) OECD regions and among types (urban intermediate and rural) of regions suggesting possibilities for growth performance exist everywhere. We find that distribution in GDP and GDP per capita growth rates follow an approximately normal distribution among large regions, but the symmetry appears to break down among small regions. Distribution of each region.s contribution to aggregate growth is not symmetric. This implies that average values loose meaning and may not be the most adequate policy target for maximizing aggregate output. On the contrary, we find evidence of a power law and its scale free properties among regional contributions to aggregate growth, implying that a very small number of regions contributes disproportionately to aggregate growth whereas the most of individual regions contribute only marginally. Nevertheless, because there is a very large number of these small regions, their cumulated contribution has a major impact on aggregate growth. For the period 1995-2005, 4% of the large regions contribute to 33% of aggregate OECD growth and the remaining 96% to 67%. Confirming the scale-free properties of the distribution, only 2.4% of small regions contribute to 27% of OECD GDP growth and the remaining 97.6% to 73%. Using these properties, we then estimate an econometric model explaining growth at the regional level by several policy variables and controls, under different scenarios, and compute the derived aggregate growth. We find that a 10% increase in policy variables -- infrastructure, educational attainments, and employment growth -- increases aggregate GDP growth annually during the period 2005-2015 by 0.22 percentage points relative to the BaU scenario. An increase in policy variables by 10% in only lagging regions will entail a similar effect on aggregate output, as well as an increase in the same policies in only leading regions. The policy variable having the largest increase on aggregate growth is an improvement in human capital (measured by education attainment) at the regional level. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1156&r=geo |
| By: | Gary Cook; Naresh Pandit; Hans Loof; Bˆrje Johansson |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses two questions: what, if anything, is the influence of geographic concentration of economic activity on patterns of foreign direct investment; what is the relationship, if any, between geographic concentration of economic activity, multinationality and innovation. The paper identifies the consensus view which is emerging in the literature, based on both theory and evidence, that strong clusters are likely to be attractive for inward direct investment and that they promote innovation. The paper tests whether this relationship is evident in Great Britain using data derived from the UKÃs Annual Foreign Direct Investment survey and the UKÃs Community Innovation Survey 2007. It addresses a surprising gap in the emerging literature by also examining the relationship between cluster strength and outward direct investment, thereby testing PorterÃs (1990) claim in The Competitive Advantage of Nations, that advantages gained in strong clusters would be the foundations of international competitiveness. The paper also distinguishes between two different types of agglomeration economy, localisation economies based on collocation of firms in related lines of activity, and urbanisation economies based on the overall concentration of economic activity in a particular region, a distinction most of the emerging literature in International Business has not made clear. The first set of models examine the propensity to engage in outward direct investment and the geographic pattern of foreign ownership of firms active in Great Britain and find that both are positively related to cluster strength, with localisation economies being more important than urbanisation economies. T wo models of innovation are estimated, the first examines what factors influence firms to be innovative and the second what influences innovation effort as measured by R&D intensity. In both cases there is evidence that regional agglomeration promotes innovation and that there are stronger effects flowing from own industry agglomeration than from broader regional scale. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1489&r=geo |
| By: | Anabela Ribeiro; Jorge Silva |
| Abstract: | Cross-border regions’ development is one of the EU major current concerns. These regions are usually less dynamic socio-economically and correspond to peripheral areas within each country. Some of these regions have recently benefited from the existence of new roads, which investment was mainly possible through the European financial programme of Transnational Transport Networks, TEN-T. Almost twenty years after its implementation start, and after initial observations on the impacts, some development problems get unexpectedly worst. Moreover, the accessibility role in regional development is not effectively accounted in the actual scientific production and the work devoted to this issue is not significant, even less if devoted to cross-border accessibility. An investigation is starting now in Portugal, using statistical spatial analysis (including spatial regression analysis and spill over analysis), to evaluate how accessibilities from each side of the border influence the other side, and how corresponding municipalities influence each other socio-economically. Using socioeconomic data from the all cross-border extension between Portugal and Spain a model will be calibrated, able to measure the relation between accessibility and development. In an early stage, it is important to look through the behaviour of both sides of the border separately, preparing the modeling process with accuracy. This initial study also prepares the setting for a more complete study including both sides of the border, therefore including Spanish data. This paper presents the spatial behaviour for a set of socioeconomic development variables including accessibility, in all the Portuguese municipalities in the border (including first and second neighbours) and for the periods of 1981-1991 and 1991-2001. This spatial behaviour analysis lead to two main conclusions: some tendencies were previously detected intuitively and this study just confirms it. Other interesting tendencies in the relationship between accessibility and development on the border region were only detected by using spatial analysis techniques. These latter tendencies represent important criteria to account for on the management and planning of existing and future transport infrastructures between the two countries. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p456&r=geo |
| By: | Jonatan Svanlund |
| Abstract: | Both national and regional studies of economic change are often depending on aggregated variables such as GDP levels, wages or population development. In this paper I will discuss how data concerning individual firms can be used in studying regional economic change. This material can also be used to shed light in differences regarding male and female entrepreneurship in a regional and historical perspective. The paper will focus on how different types of data and databases can be used and linked together in order to shed more light on the regional economic development. Therefore this paper will have a more explorative character rather then trying to answer any hypothesis. The point of departure will be how the Census of Enterprises can be used in studying regional economic change and how his material can be linked to other databases such as the Housing and population census. The Census of Enterprises was conducted in Sweden on three occasions in 1931, 1951 and 1972. From these studies one can analyse questions regarding firm size, capital intensity, differences regarding male and entrepreneurship and how this develops over time in different regions. Finally, a discussion will be in the paper on how the structure and changing composition of enterprises on a regional level can be linked to other variables such as regional population- and employment development and regional GDP development. By studying the micro-level, (firm level) and looking at questions concerning entrepreneurship, adaptation to technology and globalisation hopefully more can be said about the mechanism behind different development in different regions. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1644&r=geo |
| By: | Anca Dachin; Daniela Constantin; Zizi Goschin; Constantin Mitrut; Bogdan Ileanu |
| Abstract: | Among the EU countries, Romania displays the highest share of rural population (45%), most of it employed in agriculture. Moreover, there is a significant variation between the eight NUTS 2 regions with regards to the urban distribution and dynamics, with important intra-regional differences between the constituent counties. This paper proposes an inquiry into the capacity of urban centres to contribute to rural development in Romania from R&D and innovation perspective. First, the rural-urban gap is discussed, pointing at the consequences of the delay in implementing the reform of the production system in agriculture in terms of employment and income. Then, the positive influence of towns and cities on raising the share of employment in non-agricultural activities in rural areas is demonstrated by means of the available statistical data. Further on, the analysis of the regional dimension of R&D and innovation shows an increasing polarisation both between and within the eight development regions. The main conclusion is that the regions or counties with predominantly agricultural activities developed in subsistence households are not enough prepared to access R&D and innovation results. This conclusion is also confirmed by a regression model that analyses the influence of rural areas on regional growth. The above findings are examined in correlation with the expected positive contribution of the current rural development programme as well as of the regional operational programme and competitiveness sectorial programme funded by the EU. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1236&r=geo |
| By: | Katerina Dimaki; Vasilis Angelis; Eleni Gaki |
| Abstract: | The distribution of income has always been a main concern of economic theory and policy. Classical economists were concerned with the distribution of income between the main factors of production, land, labour and capital. Modern economists, on the other hand, are concerned with the distribution of income across individuals and households. Furthermore, the unequal distribution of personal income and wealth is one of the most prominent features of our society and one which has a profound effect on economic and social relationships. The theoretical aspects of income distribution and a number of income inequality measures have been presented in some previous work (Dimaki et al. 2001). In this paper we focus on income inequality at a regional level. Almost all countries face regional disparities, due to a variety of reasons, historic, socioeconomic, structural and geographic, leading to a number of adverse consequences for the less favored regions. Hence, Governments take certain alternative measures to alleviate those disparities and assist the less developed regions. Our objective in this paper is to: - Define a measure expressing a region’s current state of development and future prospects. - Assess the changes in that measure over time, resulting from both endogenous development and the implementation of alternative state measures for its improvement. - Relate the changes in that measure to the respective changes in the regional income inequality measures over the same period of time. The theoretical findings will be applied to the case of Greek regions over a period of time and the results will be presented and critically discussed. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1122&r=geo |
| By: | James Giesecke; Mark Horridge; Katarzyna Zawalinska |
| Abstract: | The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the most complex and also the most costly of all EU policies. It comprises over 40 financing streams, including Pillar I and Pillar II measures which are highly regulated. In the case of Poland, these are directed to all 16 NUTS2 regions. We are modelling here the regional and thus national consequences of the CAP’s most costly Pillar II measure in Poland, so called Less Favoured Areas support (LFA). It is complex, when we recognise the multipurpose of this measure and significant amount of funds directed at a large number of regions. To handle the regional complexity of this problem, we require a multi-regional model. Such a model must be detailed in its disaggregation of industries, commodities and households if it is to be capable of reflecting the complexity of this measure. As such, we use a large-scale multi-regional CGE model. The model is tailored to reflect the complexity of the rural development policy (Pillar II), of which LFA is the largest part in Poland. Of the 82 region-specific sectors in the model, over 20 is related to agricultural production. The model distinguishes rural and urban households in each region and is based on the most recent IO tables of 2005. We propose a framework for mapping the individual financing stream of the LFA to the specific structural variables relating to specific type of land (LFA and nonLFA) in each region. As to our best knowledge such an approach was never conducted before with respect not only of LFA but also Pillar II measures in general. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p872&r=geo |
| By: | Svante Karlsson; Urban Lindgren |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the geography of cross-border shopping along the border between Norway and Sweden. Border regions and cross-border shopping have become a subject of considerable interest in the ongoing process of integration in the European union. A result of this transformation process, besides the removal of national barriers, is a development of a greater economic and political transborder cooperation, which is expressed by flows of labour and goods. The border between Norway and Sweden is no exception since movements of labour and goods are genuinely associated with the region. However, the cross-border shopping and the inter-regional labour market have increased rapidly in recent years in a significant way. The reasons have to do with a strong economic growth in Norway, more specifically in the Oslo region, while the Swedish side of the border has been a periphery in the national context. Thus the Norwegians shows a high purchasing power, while wages and real estate are relatively low priced in Sweden. It is precisely these differences that create space for profitable economic activity on one side but notin the other. In this paper, a longitudinal individual database (ASTRID) is used to identify flows of labours. The aim of the paper is to investigate regional processes of economic restructuring potentially influencing labour markets close to the border. In particular, we analyse the interplay between changes in relative importance of different economic sectors on the one hand, and individuals' job mobility patterns on the other. Is it the case that decreased labour demand in the manufacturing industries has triggered job mobility to the growing retail sector? Or is the case that the new labour market situation is cleared by inter-regional job mobility or by changed patterns of labour market participation? The results show that retail and cross-border shopping in recent years have become a huge part of the labour market at the Swedish side of the border. A transformation from an economy based on manufactoring, small scale engineering and traditional basic industries to high levels of service is the regional outcome. Keywords: Labour market dynamics, Cross-border shopping, Retail geography, Economic restructuring |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p992&r=geo |
| By: | Giovanni Millo |
| Abstract: | In the spatial econometrics literature, spatial error dependence is characterized by spatial autoregressive processes, which relate every observation in the cross-section to any other with distance-decaying intensity: i.e., dependence obeys Tobler's First Law of Geography ('everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things'). In the literature on factor models, on the converse, the degree of correlation between cross-sectional units depends only on factor loadings. Standard spatial correlation tests have power against both types of dependence, while the economic meaning of the two can be much different; so it may be useful to devise a test for detecting 'distance-related' dependence in the presence of a 'factor-type' one. Pesaran's CD is a test for global cross-sectional dependence with good properties. The CD(p) variant only takes into account p-th order neighbouring units to test for local cross-sectional dependence. The pattern of CD(p) as p increases can be informative about the type of dependence in the errors, but the test power changes as new pairs of observations are taken into account. I propose a bootstrap test based on the values taken by the CD(p) test under permutations of the neighbourhood matrix, i.e. when 'resampling the neighbours'. I provide Montecarlo evidence of it being able to tell the presence of spatial-type dependence in the errors of a typical spatial panel irrespective of the presence of an unobserved factor structure. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p752&r=geo |
| By: | Esteban Fernandez-Vazquez |
| Abstract: | The traditional approach to estimate spatial models bases on a preconceived spatial weights matrix to measure spatial interaction among locations. The a priori assumptions used to define this matrix are supposed to be in line with the “true” spatial relationships among the locations of the dataset. Another possibility consists on using some information present on the sample data to specify an empirical matrix of spatial weights. In this paper we propose to estimate spatial cross-regressive models by generalized maximum entropy (GME). This technique allows combing assumptions about the spatial interconnections among the locations studied with information from the sample data. Hence, the spatial component of the model estimated by the techniques proposed is not just preconceived but it allows incorporating empirical information. We compare some traditional methodologies with the proposed GME estimator by means of Monte Carlo simulations in several scenarios and show that the entropy-based estimation techniques can outperform traditional approaches. An empirical case is also studied in order to illustrate the implementation of the proposed techniques for a real-world example. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p503&r=geo |
| By: | Rita Santos; Walter Leal; Evando Mirra |
| Abstract: | The innovation systems perspective is primarily concerned with the knowledge flow and diffusion and its positive impact of stimulating economic growth. In innovation systems observed at the regional level there is a tendency of technologically dynamic production to become spatially concentrated in clusters, where individuals and organizations possessing specialized knowledge and technological capabilities. Consequently, results appear as collective efficiency, competitive advantage and economic benefits. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Brazil set up an important telecommunications cluster in Campinas region, fostered by government policies, and evolved around a telecom R&D Centre. Several small high-tech firms were established, grew, competed and cooperated with the local infrastructure and multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries. These, in turn, increased their local technological efforts and engaged in joint technological programs with local partners. In this paper the relation between innovation and knowledge is illustrated by the high-technology cluster of Campinas. It also discusses clustering enabling technology for environmental sustainability issues and regional implications. Keywords: development; knowledge spillovers; region; innovation systems; sustainability |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1539&r=geo |
| By: | Juan R. Cuadrado-Roura; Andres Maroto-Sanchez |
| Abstract: | The relationship between economic structure and productivity growth has been a subject of increasing interest over recent decades. The innovative focus of this paper concerns the role of the service sector in this relationship at a regional level. Services play a core role in advanced economies, both from a quantitative and a strategic point of view. Traditionally, productivity has been introduced as explaining factor of tertiarization processes in advanced economies, while it has been simultaneously assessed that services display lower productivity levels and growth rates than other economic industries. Nevertheless, in recent years many papers and authors have refuted or limited these conventional theses. This paper focuses on the impact of tertiarization on overall productivity growth, using a sample of European NUTS-2 regions in the period between 1980 and 2007. The results partially refute traditional knowledge on the productivity of services. Contrary to what conventional theories suggest, this research demonstrates that several tertiary activities have shown dynamic productivity growth rates, while their contribution to overall productivity growth plays a more important role than was historically believed. KEY WORDS: General Regional Economics, Service sector, Productivity, Structural change. JEL CLASSIFICATION: L80, O04, C67, R11. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p163&r=geo |
| By: | Egle Tafenau |
| Abstract: | The paper asks whether subsidies aiming to redistribute economic activity across regions can be justified with the welfare argument. Moreover, different tax systems are compared with respect to the size of the subsidy needed for achieving a certain spatial distribution of economic activity, and achievable welfare level. The constructed capital model with two regions is chosen as the underlying model, with the regions interpreted as parts of one country. Until now only a little attention has been paid to policy and welfare issues in the NEG literature. It is known that the results of a political intervention meant for increasing welfare could instead decrease it. The paper shows that with an appropriate tax system the adverse effects of subsidies can at least be alleviated. A proportional subsidy to capital increases the overall capital stock, enabling to draw utility from a wider variety of goods. However, the regional effects are different: compared to the no-subsidy case, the subsidized region can enjoy a larger share of locally produced and thus, cheaper goods, while the non-subsidized region has to import more. Moreover, when the subsidy is financed by a uniform income tax, all economic agents bear the tax burden and might face a welfare decrease. If the subsidy is financed by collecting taxes only from the subsidised region, the residents in the non-subsidised region are not hurt by the income loss, but they still lose due to higher price index. The residents of the subsidised region have to give up more of their income for financing the subsidy. Thus, in both cases the net effects are unclear, depending on the values of parameters and the level of trade costs. The Rawlsian and utilitarian welfare function, and the compensated Pareto criterion are applied for welfare analysis. According to the first two concepts the policy can be welfare increasing. The analysis of a potential Pareto improvement through a compensation shows that mostly it is not possible to set a preference order over the policy and no-policy case. However, over some range of trade costs a welfare improvement is possible. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1182&r=geo |
| By: | Torben Dall Schmidt; Aki Kangasharju; Daniel Rauhut |
| Abstract: | Population changes are decisive for growth performances. This has been shown in a number of country studies, using time series data. The analysis is here extended in two dimensions: 1) the importance of demographics for growth is taking in to account a regional dimension allowing for spatial error structures in dynamic panel model and 2) doing the analysis in an international comparative set-up testing for the differences in effects under different national contexts. The countries considered in the paper are Nordic countries, which has the advantage of comparing rather similar countries in terms of institutional, social and legislative systems, but with quite different types of geographic structures. It therefore allows for an analysis of the importance of population change for regional growth patterns in rather similar welfare systems but for countries what vary considerably in size and geographic structures. The analysis build on harmonized data for the Nordic countries covering the period 1994-2006. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p922&r=geo |
| By: | Jasmina Osmankovic; Rabija Somun |
| Abstract: | Territorial cohesion and regional development – case of Bosnia and Herzegovina In paper we analyzed territorial cohesion and regional development in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1995 to 2010. In the context this theme we analyzed convergence and disproportional into Bosnia and Herzegovina during the postwar period. We used relevant statistical methods. We focus on demographic data and standard macroeconomic data (gross domestic product, gross domestic product per capita, employment rate, unemployment rate, population rate) on local, cantonal, entities and national level fro relevant statistical offices (Statistical agencies for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Federal Office of Statistics, etc.) We hope that this result would be useful in context discussion about new territorial organization Bosnia and Herzegovina. Key words: territorial cohesion, convergence, development, Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p607&r=geo |
| By: | Christine Hudson |
| Abstract: | In the move towards governance, Swedish regional policy has changed from a largely centrally steered approach closely associated with the social democratic aim of levelling out territorial differences and helping lagging regions. A more decentralized regional policy with a more neo-liberal vision has emerged in which regions must take responsibility themselves and for their own well-being and be able to compete effectively in the global economy in order to survive and thrive. There is a powerful rhetoric of inclusion - of all being needed in the struggle to be successful and achieve economic growth. In this discourse of 'strong regions' with active, entrepreneurial citizens, what spaces and subject positions are being created for those who do not fit the strong region image? What are the gendered consequences? What happens to those not usually associated with economic growth? Are new spaces opening up for the silent in regional policies? What identities are being constituted for, for example, declining rural regions and non-traditional regional actors such as women's groups, immigrants and ethnic minorities? What are the consequences of this? Are these groups being constructed as active subjects able to influence and shape regional policies or as the passive objects of policies? Using Carol Bacchi's the 'What's the Problem? Approach' (Bacchi 1999), these questions will be explored in relation to a relation to a sparsely populated, peripheral region, V‰sterbotten, in the far north of Sweden. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1621&r=geo |
| By: | Winters, John V. (University of Cincinnati) |
| Abstract: | Areas surrounding colleges and universities are often able to build their local stock of human capital by retaining recent graduates in the area after they finish their education. This paper classifies 41 U.S. metropolitan areas as "college towns" and investigates differences in employment outcomes between college graduates who stay in the college town where they obtained their degree and college graduates who leave after completing their degree. We find that college town stayers experience less favorable employment outcomes along multiple dimensions. On average, stayers earn lower annual and hourly wages and work in less educated occupations. |
| Keywords: | migration, human capital, education, college towns, wages |
| JEL: | I20 J24 R23 |
| Date: | 2012–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6723&r=geo |
| By: | Stein Ostbye; Sylvain Barde |
| Abstract: | Knowledge spillovers have recently been analysed by Barde (2009) and Ostbye (2010) in a spatial general equilibrium framework. Both studies lack explicit micro foundations for the spillovers – spillovers just take place and depend on firm density. The models must therefore be seen as reduced forms that may potentially be consistent with several structural interpretations. In this paper, the aim is to go some way in offering plausible micro foundations. We consider two alternatives: knowledge dissemination through knowledge embodied in labour moving between firms following Combes and Duranton (2006) and knowledge creation and dissemination through research and development (R&D) following d’Asprémont and Jacquemin (1988). |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p794&r=geo |
| By: | Norbert Schanne |
| Abstract: | The development of employment and unemployment in regional labour markets is known to spatially interdependent. Global Vector-Autoregressive (GVAR) models generate a link between the local and the surrounding labour markets and thus might be useful when analysing and forecasting employment and unemployment even if they are non-stationary or co-trending. Furthermore, GVARs have the advantage to allow for both strong cross-sectional dependence on ``leader regions' and weak cross-sectional, spatial dependence. For the recent and further development of labour markets the economic situation (described e.g. by business-cycle indicators), politics and environmental impacts (e.g. climate) may be relevant. Information on these impacts can be integrated in addition to the joint development of employment and unemployment and the spatial link in a way that allows on the one hand to carry out economic plausibility checks easily and on the other hand to directly receive measures regarding the statistical properties and the precision of the forecasts. Then, the forecasting accuracy is demonstrated for German regional labour-market data in simulated forecasts at different horizons and for several periods. Business-cycle indicators seem to have no information regarding labour-market prediction, climate indicators little. In contrast, including information about labour-market policies and vacancies, and accounting for the lagged and contemporaneous spatial dependence can improve the forecasts relative to a simple bivariate model. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1044&r=geo |
| By: | David McArthur; Inge Thorsen |
| Abstract: | This paper uses panel data on migration flows between municipalities in Norway from 2000-2008. The relatively new method of fixed effects vector decomposition (fevd) is used to estimate parameters for time-invariant spatial structure variables as well as for labour market factors such as unemployment rates, income and house prices. We compare several model specifications. Results on employment/unemployment are fairly consistent across models. Results on other variables, for instance income and house prices, are less robust. We also experiment with several measures of spatial structure, which adds considerably to the explanatory power of the model, as expected. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p532&r=geo |
| By: | Alexander Pelyasov |
| Abstract: | To create state of the art picture of the European regional science review of Lodz Congress papers will be combined with the materials of our previous reviews of reports from the last four Congresses, and our analysis of hundreds of papers published in the major journals of regional science for the last 10-12 years. We will characterize the peculiarities of major national schools in European regional science, its strengths and weaknesses; describe the specific intellectual manner of the major leaders of European regional science; reveal real and potential bridges between regional science and neighboring fields of knowledge - cognitive science, institutional economics in particular. In the focus of this year review will be gaps of our knowledge in Regional science and how they can be filled with our collective efforts. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p384&r=geo |
| By: | Marios Kondakis; Katerina Dimaki; Vasilis Angelis |
| Abstract: | Greece is a country with noticeable regional disparities. Those disparities are due to a number of reasons, historic, socioeconomic, structural and geographic and create a series of adverse consequences, such as over congestion and environmental degradation in big urban areas on one hand, depopulation, unutilized resources, low income and unemployment in rural areas on the other. The need to bridge inequalities between Greek regions has been the focus of all regional policies implemented in Greece over the last 40-50 years. The main objectives of those policies were to limit further concentration of economic activities and population in large urban areas and ensure a well-balanced growth of all regions. Toward this end, regions were classified in various groups, on the basis of their state of development. Within this framework, large amounts of money have been spent to improve the infrastructure of less developed regions and to provide financial incentives to industries and employees so as to move into those regions. However, the results of those measures have been rather poor and the main reason for this were that the policies employed were ill-designed and addressed to regions unprepared to take full advantage of them. Hence, a first step towards improving this situation would be to define a measure giving the true picture of the region and the prospects of its sustainable development. This measure, the Image of a region, has already been defined (Angelis, 1980, 1990) and successfully applied (Mavri et al, 2009, Gaki et al, 2009, Angelis et al, 2010). In this paper we substantially improve the way of measuring a region’s image and we show that it can be used as a basis for assessing the alternative paths for its future development and selecting the optimum. The method is applied to selected regions of Greece and the values of their Images have been calculated. Furthermore, starting from the Image value of each region at a given point in time, we draw the optimum path for its future development. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1103&r=geo |
| By: | Jasmina Osmankovic; Emina Resic |
| Abstract: | RELEVANCE OF DEMOGRAPHIC CRITERION AT ESTABLISHING STATISTIC REGIONS IN CONTEXT PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION Within the process of defining statistic regionalization in the countries being candidates and the potential candidates, a demographic criterion is pointed out as the key one. It is a reason why we, in this work, concentrate on the criterion of demographic size while determining statistic (NUTS) regions in the European Union within the context of implementation of the Regulation on the establishing common classification of territorial units for the statistics. Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council from May 26th, 2003 related to the establishment of common classification of territorial units for statistics. Within the work, we verify the hypothesis: that there is significant deviation from the criterion of demographic size at statistic (NUTS) regions in European Union. We verify the hypothesis by applying relevant statistic methods. Data basis for testing hypothesis is overtaken from the relevant tables of the Eurostat official website http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/statistics/search_database. Testing was performed in two steps. In the first step, 317 statistic regions of the second level (NUTS II) were analyzed. The second step analyzed 1,327 statistic regions of the third level (NUTS III). Both steps specifically analyzed deviation from minimal and maximal demographic size of statistic region belonging to corresponding level. The results are presented in tables and graphs. Actuality of research is determined by the Bosnia and Herzegovina obligation to define statistic regions (NUTS regions) so as by the fact that in the Bosnia and Herzegovina case non critical application of this criterion as the eliminatory one, may be in the conflict with the first criterion, or, existing administrative units and other criterions being relevant for the formation of regional structure. Key words: demographic criterion, NUTS, statistic regions, integration |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p604&r=geo |
| By: | Adli Abouzeedan; Boo Edgar; Thomas Hedner |
| Abstract: | In contrast to the Entrepreneurial Recycling Model (EREC), the Entrepreneurial Remedy Model (EREM) demands an active role of innovation to create an environment where small and medium size companies (SMEs) are developed. The EREM may provide a conceptual platform which may explain why developed regions have succeeded in maintaining a healthy entrepreneurial environment, while the less developed have failed to do that. Further, the Open Innovation concept is brought into the discussion connecting innovation to entrepreneurial environment conditions. A question which remains to be solves has to do to with the impact of innovation on the extent of entrepreneurial activities at a regional level. In this paper we will analyze and discuss this issue and provide understanding of the impact of innovation using the EREM. As such, the EREM offers an analytical tool to examine how the macroeconomic conditions impact the creation of new firms within a region or a country. Keywords: Open innovation, Entrepreneurial Remedy Model, EREM, regional development, incubators, start-ups, Small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1277&r=geo |
| By: | Simone Strauf |
| Abstract: | The importance of creative industries and the creative sector for economic growth and regional development found its way more and more into scientific discussions. These discussions mainly focus on the influence of creative industries on the innovative ability (innovative milieu),on the competitiveness, and on the labour market of regions and nations. Most prominent within this field is the approach of the 'creative class' used to explain the success and the development of regions and nations. Terms and definitions of creative industries and the cultural sector are so far not consistent and sometimes include different businesses. The meaning of the cultural sector becomes more evident by focussing on the regional level. Infrastructure facilities and cultural events are part of the cultural sector and are located in nearly every area, in agglomerations as well as in rural areas. This paper will concentrate on the role of infrastructure facilities and cultural events, and will point out their contribution and their potential for the location itself and the regional development. The author will use empirical data from infrastructure facilities in Germany and Switzerland (Konzert- und Kongresshaus Luzern, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden) and two amateur theatres in Switzerland, which are located in rural areas (Einsiedler Welttheater, Landschaftstheater Ballenberg). Based on these four case studies the paper will show how different cultural facilities and activities can contribute to several aspects of regional development. As a result the paper will state that cultural infrastructure facilities and activities have positive effects on the regional added value as well as on the image of a region, on networks and competences within a region and on the identity of a region. Especially these so called intangible effects have positive effects on the location attractiveness and the competitiveness of the region. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p267&r=geo |
| By: | Alex Hagen-Zanker; Ying Jin |
| Abstract: | In modelling spatial economic interactions such as embodied in the movements of people and goods, the study area is usually subdivided into geographic units, i.e. zones, to represent the origin, destination and any stop-over locations. In most cases, model precision tends to improve as the study area is subdivided into increasingly small zones. Smaller zones however come at the cost of increased run-time. In practice the modeller often has to compromise on the resolution or the geographic coverage, which impinges upon model accuracy and applicability. Current trends in spatial economic interactions are calling for larger study areas and finer spatial details: As transport and telecommunications improve, the realm of spatial interaction continues to expand. Furthermore, the rapid expansion in e-monitoring of the movements of goods and people is offering ever-increasing spatial detail. The combined impact is a strong need to expand spatial model coverage whilst capturing local details. This paper reports on the development of an innovative zoning. The basic idea is to use more detailed zoning where interaction is stronger, e.g. at shorter distance or between higher density areas. Instead of a single zonal division for the whole study area, the zoning scheme consists of one specific zonal division for each respective location (atomic zone) in the study area, adapted to the interaction flows to and from that location. Incorporating this adaptive zoning scheme improves the scaling behaviour of spatial interaction and choice models, as the number of interactions per zone is no longer equal to the number of zones, but - depending on the precise nature of the interaction - logarithmic to it instead. The adaptive zoning scheme will require models to be adjusted to the new geographical representation. This paper will therefore detail the required modifications to a typical doubly-constrained spatial interaction model. Application on commuting patterns in England demonstrates that the adoptive zoning scheme can reduce the number of spatial interactions by as much as 95% whilst maintaining a fine granularity. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1036&r=geo |
| By: | Edward L. Glaeser |
| Abstract: | America’s local governments spend about one-eighth of our national income, one-fourth of total government spending, and employ over 14 million people. This paper surveys the large and growing economics literature on local governments and their finances. A primary difference between local and national government is the ease of labor mobility within countries, which disciplines local governments and means that heterogeneous service levels can be beneficial, but mobility also challenges local attempts at redistribution. The empirical literature on mobility responses to local government is distinguished, but remains a pressing area for future research. We have sophisticated models of local spending, tax policy and institutional design, but research is often far less developed on even basic questions of costs and benefits of core local public services. |
| JEL: | H0 H2 H23 H71 |
| Date: | 2012–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18244&r=geo |
| By: | Ana Isabel Moreno Monroy; Michiel Gerritse |
| Abstract: | The informal sector absorbs on average 50% of employment in developing countries. However, it has not been considered in New Economic Geography (NEG) models that try to explain urbanization and agglomeration in developing countries. In a first attempt to bridge this gap, we develop a NEG model that incorporates the informal sector. Empirical evidence shows that the informal sector is mainly composed of relatively small firms that are unskilled labor intensive, face capital restrictions and that, given scale limitations, do not trade interregionally or internationally. Thus, besides an increasing returns to scale manufacturing sector, our model allows for an informal services sector with constant returns to scale and high transport cost. We investigate competitive as well as complementary roles for the informal sector and the manufacturing sector. To do so, we model competition on the demand side by allowing substitution between manufacturing and informal sector goods and complementary linkages on the production side, in the form of input requirements in manufacturing from the informal sector. Labor is mobile between industries and locations. The model predicts where informal employment flourishes. An informal sector arises at every location, but depending on manufacturing transport cost and preferences, the industrial or the rural location hosts the larger share of informal production. Vice versa, the size and characteristics of the informal sector have an effect on the long run outcome of the model. Not only does the informal sector influence the model’s centripetal forces, but informal supply shocks (and regulation) may also determine the selection of one of multiple long run equilibria. Thus, an expanding informal sector can have both structural and long-run consequences for economic activity. In terms of policy, the paper shows that recommendations regarding rural-urban migration in developing countries are sensitive to agglomeration effects. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p661&r=geo |
| By: | Dimitris Kallioras; George Petrakos; Maria Tsiapa; Lefteris Topaloglou |
| Abstract: | The abolition of the artificial impediments of cross-border interaction has produced a new EU regional socioeconomic map, releasing dynamics that have influenced significantly the EU socioeconomic space. Especially at the borderlands, a new mix of opportunities and threats has come forth, putting EU border regions in a state of flux. The paper compiles a cross-section empirical econometric model that accounts for growth performance in the 349 EU NUTS III border regions during the period 2000-2006. The findings of the paper suggest that there is a series of inherent and acquired factors (initial conditions) that determine the growth performance in the EU border regions. These factors are both ('traditional') quantitative and qualitative (“soft”), indicating the complexity of border issues. The findings of the econometric investigation have important implications for both theory and policy. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p702&r=geo |
| By: | Aliye Ahu Gulumser; Tuzin Baycan-Levent; Peter Nijkamp |
| Abstract: | Creative capacity in the field of regional sciences means the capability of any region to generate knowledge and thus to achieve innovation and the diffusion of the output of the innovative activity while obtaining the viability and sustainability of this process. Although creative capacity studies mainly focus on urban regions, the late rural studies and empirical evidences showed that rural region has a great potential capacity in terms of its five components viz. knowledge; innovation; entrepreneurship; creativity; and networks. But, these opportunities have shown by a rural specific approach rather than an urban approach. On this basis, by taking into consideration these discussions in the literature, we assume that the rural creative capacity can be evaluated by the recent changes in rural regions that show the capability of rural regions to exploit its knowledge as an output. On this purpose, in this study, we aim to evaluate which component is relatively important to identify the level of rural creative capacity. Therefore, the study focuses on 60 villages from Europe and 17 villages from Turkey by deploying the data obtained from the in-depth questionnaires. This study is a first attempt at settlement level with an optimistic approach to measure the opportunities lying at the heart of rural regions. The results of the study showed that creativity in terms of traditions is the most important component in both cases while European villages have more opportunities and do not have the latent rural problems while Turkish villages are still suffering from the well-known rural problems that their capacity exists but it is very limited. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p451&r=geo |
| By: | Marian Rizov; Paul Walsh |
| Abstract: | The focus of the paper is on evaluating the productivity gap between rural and urban locations in the UK using micro data. We build a structural model of the unobservable productivity emphasising the link between productivity and spatial density of economic activity and adapt the semi-parametric estimation approach proposed in Olley and Pakes (1996) to estimate the parameters of production functions at firm level, within 4-digit UK manufacturing industries, for the period 1997 - 2001. We allow market structure to differ by endogenous export status and location choices and model productivity as a second-order Markov process which greatly enhances our ability to obtain unbiased and consistent estimates of TFP measures at firm level. We aggregate the firm TFPs by location category following the 2004 DEFRA definition of rural and find that aggregate productivity systematically differs across urban, rural less sparse and rural sparse locations as the magnitudes of the differentials are 13.2 percent and 18.0 percent, respectively. Our results are in line with several recent studies. Next, we decompose aggregate productivity into productivity index and industry composition index. The productivity index is the highest in urban locations suggesting that productivity is strongly influenced by density of economic activity and proximity to economic mass. Because industry composition index is positively correlated with productivity index it is evident that locations with high productivity are also characterised by industrial structure enhancing productivity. Further, analysing changes in the decomposition indexes over two periods, before and after implementation of the Euro by the UK main trading partners, reveals substantial heterogeneity in responses across location categories under increased competitive pressure. The main finding is that there is a tendency of rural sparse locations catching up with the urban and rural less sparse location categories in terms of aggregate productivity over the period of analysis. We also find evidence that increased competitive pressure as a result of changes in trade conditions after implementation of the Euro by the UK’s main trading partners has acted as a substitute for the role of density of economic activity in enhancing industry composition, especially in rural sparse locations. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p162&r=geo |
| By: | Sara Johansson; Therese Norman |
| Abstract: | International markets for food products have shown a strong growth during recent years. Trade flows between countries are increasing and can be seen as a reflection of a higher degree of competition in both domestic and international markets. At the same time, consumers show a growing interest in product attributes associated with the geographical origin of the product and/or specific production methods. This paper studies the regional specialization in food industries and uses a shift-share analysis to identify regions with comparative advantages in food production in Sweden. The Swedish food sector is of a significant size in the domestic economy, and is the fourth largest industry in the Swedish manufacturing sector. The food sector host both small and large firms, and is represented in all (geographical) parts of the country. As in many European countries, the food sector is important with respect to employment in rural areas and therefore an obvious target for rural policies. Recent studies of food industries indicate that differences in regional characteristics, such as concentration of firms in the industry (clusters) and concentration of food exporters partly explain the export behavior of firms in the Swedish food industry and of food-processing firms in France . These findings indicate that location-specific factors impact on firms’ competitiveness in international markets. This paper explores this issue further in an empirical analysis of regional comparative advantages in food processing. The purpose of this study is to analyze what type of regional characteristics that stimulate regional specialization in food industries. Of particular interest is the importance of unique regional food specialties, small-scale food manufacturing, size of the local market and accessibility to foreign customers in shaping regional comparative advantages in food manufacturing. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p809&r=geo |
| By: | Navid Bazzazian; Thomas √Östebro |
| Abstract: | There has been an increased trend in the number of spin-offs generated by universities in the past thirty years. Past research reveals that the majority of these start-ups are located in the same region as the university from which they originated. In this paper, we investigate critically what universities do to encourage entrepreneurship to increase regional economic development. We will also discuss whether maximizing local entrepreneurship necessarily maximizes total welfare. Unfortunately, the scientific evidence reviewed in this paper indicates that policy changes at universities typically have very little impact on commercialization of research and the benefits to the universities are marginal. For example, current evidence indicates that creating incubators and science parks on university grounds have no discernable effects on local start-up rates. Further, from a theoretical perspective we have reviewed articles showing that introducing Technology Licensing Offices (TLOs), the most popular method to stimulate research commercialization, may likely introduce economic inefficiencies, hold-ups and decision biases that deviate from what is optimal. The median university among the top U.S. research-based institutions creates less than two academic spin-offs per year and so the relative effects on local economic conditions through TLO efforts and policies are bound to be marginal. Nevertheless the evidence also shows that the scientific stature of the faculty, the commercialization culture at the university, and the sheer number of science and engineering students graduated do have important positive effects on local start-up rates. Increasing expenditures on university staff and students causes increases in regional productivity growth and innovation and the marginal effects are much bigger in structurally weak regions. Evidence confirms that university spin-offs disproportionally favor local development. Maybe as much as 80 percent of all university spin-offs are and remain locally situated. However, universities that maximize local effects will not maximize their societal impact. Instead, it appears more efficient if universities simply try to maximize licensing revenues and not worry about the number of spin-offs and their locations. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p822&r=geo |
| By: | Boo Edgar; Adli Abouzeedan; Thomas Hedner |
| Abstract: | Scenario planning is a tool that can be used to project and promote innovation activities in organizations. The more disruptive the innovation is, the more beneficial effects will be expected to come out of utilizing a scenario planning process. This planning approach may be considered when discussing innovation in relation to regional development as well as in respect to the introduction of novel and potentially radical innovations. In this paper, we discuss the utilization of scenario planning to promote innovation in a regional development context. Scenario planning may provide possibilities for creating various alternative but plausible outcomes (scenarios) of the future and may further provide the possibility to examine them in depth. Scenario planning considers the uncertainties and driving forces that may have an impact on the dynamics of regional development. In the paper we discuss the policies and strategies which are required to promote and enhance the application of the scenario planning technique in initiating and sustaining progress and development in the Nordic region. Keywords: Scenario planning, innovation, regional development, plausible outcomes, regional development. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1294&r=geo |
| By: | Jitka Kloudova; Jianpeng Zhang |
| Abstract: | The creative economy is playing a more and more important role in regional development to generate income and jobs opportunity. At the centre of creative economy, many evidences show that the creative industries are the most dynamic emerging sectors. In many countries, especially in developed countries, the growth rate of creative industries is more than that of GDP and other industries. In this paper, we examined how is the relationship between the ratio of creative industries' value added to GDP and GDP per capital and if the growth rate of creative industries is more than that of secondary industry through the empirical analysis of Chinese 23 regions data. The results show that strong and significant correlations can be found between the ratio of creative industries' value added and the GDP per capital. There is no evidence to show that growth rate of creative industries is deferent that of secondary industry for all the regions. But when we divide the samples as two groups, there is weak evidence to infer that the growth rate of creative industries is more than that of secondary industry for higher GDP per capital regions; on the contrary, there is overwhelming evidence to infer that the growth rate of secondary industry is more than that of creative industries for lower GDP per capital regions. Key words: creative industries, secondary industry, regional development, China |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p635&r=geo |
| By: | Manfred Walser |
| Abstract: | The region Walgau is located in the Austrian Federal State of Vorarlberg. The 21 municipalities started a three years development programme to develop common goals and to enhance the intercommunal cooperation. The region is characterized by a dispersed structure of settlement and differences between the more agricultural oriented mountainside and the more industrialized bottom of the valley. For this one of the main goals of process is to establish a regional learning process about different requirements and living conditions. The increasing meaning of the Web 2.0 (social web) is discussed in different fields of politics and society but less in regional development activities. The Web 2.0 means the interactive part of the Internet in which users generate their own environments and issues by communicating, sharing, collecting and co-working. User analyses show that users of different social networks have an average age between 25 and 35 years and represent a generation which weekly is represented in local and regional participation processes. At a first glance it seems promising to use such platforms to enhance the group of activists and to promote the issues of a regional development process. But the experiment also can fail if the target group of such kind of web activities strongly differ from the actors interested in such processes. In this case we have to state that the instrument and the issue fall apart. In the regional development process 'Im Walgau' a regional Wiki starts in January 2010 as an important element of a public discourse on regional development issues. At the ERSA Conference the methodological design of the development process and the concept of communication including the web 2.0- application will be presented and first empirical results of internet participation can be shown. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p766&r=geo |
| By: | Alfredo Paloyo; Colin Vance; Matthias Vorell |
| Abstract: | We identify the causal effect of a reduction in military personnel on a number of socioeconomic indicators within the periphery of the military base. The base realignments and closures (BRACs) within the German armed forces is an exogenous source of variation that allows for the estimation of the causal effect of a particular demand shock on household income, output, unemployment, and crime rates within a specified buffer zone around each base. The analysis covers 129 communities for the period 2003-2007. Consistent with evidence found elsewhere, we find that these base adjustments have a marginal impact on the local community in which the bases are located. Within the context of the current political discussion over BRACs in Germany, this study provides policy guidance by examining the costs and benefits to the surrounding community. It also gives an indication of how quickly a local economy can adjust to an exogenous reduction in demand. The data on crime were obtained from the Criminal Statistics of the German Police. Other socioeconomic variables are drawn from the federal and state statistical offices of Germany. The data are recorded at the level of the Kreis (NUTS 3). The data on military bases, closures, and core personnel were taken from the Deployment Concept of the Federal Armed Forces of Germany 2004. This includes a variable that spatially situates the base at the Gemeinde level (LAU 2/NUTS 5). To incorporate the information from the home and surrounding Kreise, we use a Geographic Information System (GIS) application to draw a circular buffer around the centroid of the selected Gemeinde. The area of the buffer's overlap with each of the Kreise contained therein is calculated and then divided by the total area of the buffer. This quotient is used to construct a weighted sum of the information in each of the surrounding Kreise for the variables used in the analysis. One advantage of this approach is that, by adjusting the size of the buffer, it allows us to readily test the robustness of the results according to the scale of the analysis. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p840&r=geo |
| By: | Michael Fritsch; Florian Noseleit |
| Abstract: | We investigate the effects that regional start-up activity has on employment in new and in incumbent businesses. The analysis is performed for West German regions over the 1987-2002 period. It shows that the effects of new businesses on employment in the incumbents are significantly positive and that this indirect effect on incumbent employment leads to more jobs than what is created by the newcomers. We find that the effect of new business formation on incumbents is exclusively driven by start-ups that survive a certain period of time. We draw conclusions for policy and for further research. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1102&r=geo |
| By: | Aiello Francesco; Pupo Valeria |
| Abstract: | This paper provides a contribution to the debate on the role of EU cohesion policy in Italy. The focus is on the territorial effects of EU spending from 1996 to 2007. The empirical analysis considers a neoclassical growth model which is augmented by the structural funds spent by each region. Using panel data and a dynamic panel estimator we find that the structural funds, even having had a greater impact in the South compared to the Centre-North, have not contributed to reduce the economic divide in Italy. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p136&r=geo |
| By: | Adriana Di Liberto; Stefano Usai |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a fixed-effect panel methodology that enables us to simultaneously take into account both TFP convergence and the traditional neoclassical-type of convergence. We analyse a sample of 199 European regions between 1985 and 2006 and find the absence of an overall process of TFP convergence as we observe that TFP dispersion is virtually constant across two different subperiods. However, the absence of a strong process of TFP convergence hides interesting and complex dynamic patterns across regions as we observe significant changes in countries ranking. These results suggest that while obtaining fast growth in TFP is not simple, it appears to be a key factor in achieving fast GDP per capita growth. They also suggests a role for geography in the observed dynamics. Our results are robust to the use of different estimation procedures such as simple LSDV, Kiviet-corrected LSDV, and GMM àla Arellano and Bond. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p409&r=geo |
| By: | Velicu, Ileana |
| Abstract: | In this paper, the need for financing through a bank loan is analyzed by integrating the resources in the causal chain: bank loan - jobs - consumption - taxes - local revenues - new sources of investment - local development. Bank credit is presented as an equally available resource for different "actors" of the local community - individuals, businesses agents and local authorities. |
| Keywords: | bank loans; economic development; resources; local authorities |
| JEL: | O18 |
| Date: | 2012–07–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:40175&r=geo |
| By: | Iason Koufodontis; Andreas Alexopoulos; Eleni Gaki |
| Abstract: | The study presented in the paper attempts to examine if the alleged effectiveness of the developmental funds - one of the main strategic tools of the EU - can be traced in the typical statistics provided by various authorities and organizations. The study focuses in the case of funds used in Greece during a period of years and it tries to provide insight in the issue, based on statistical and empirical data analysis methodologies. Available information regarding European programmes and corresponding funds is charted and linked to relevant official statistical data provided by Greek national authorities and Eurostat. Selected sectoral and regional actions are analyzed based on an optimal match between funding objectives and official statistics. The results, both statistical and empirical, appear to support the argument: assessment of EU regional policy based on statistics does not seem to be a conclusive method of evaluation. Keywords: EU funds, regional development, developmental statistics, policy effectiveness, territorial cohesion, policy evaluation |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1063&r=geo |
| By: | Ana Claudia Arruda Laprovitera; Dinilson Pedroza Junior |
| Abstract: | The objective of the article is to analyze the role of small (businesses) companies in regional economic development. The article analyzes the current structure of tax concession and financial incentives into improving regional development and how it can be modified and directed in promoting small companies, especially the small enterprises located in poor regions of Brazil. We discuss how the incentives for regional development can be used to foment small business environment in poor regions, more specifically, in the Northeast of Brazil. A small business environment is a set of social, economic and institutional spaces where such companies operate, considering its opportunities and threats. The small companies are understood - in the vision of the official institutions of Brazil - as units of production of goods and services of reduced scale. This concept considers the formal organizations (with legal register and tax contributions), excluding the informal sectors of the economy. The size of a company, its number of employees and its market share are criterias usually applied to the definition of small companies. We argue that tax and finances incentives to the small company in north-eastern of Brazil must consider the scenarios techniques, as anticipations of futures, conditioned of the determined hypotheses. The methodology of construction of scenarios constitutes a tool for anticipation of the events, delimiting its probabilities and organizing the uncertainty. It is assumed that the scenarios of small business environment are influenced by the national economic, political and institutional contexts. The work is based in social, economic and institutional sceneries available for Brazil adapted for the environment of the small companies of Brazilian northeast. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p50&r=geo |
| By: | Katalin Erdos; Attila Varga |
| Abstract: | Knowledge flows from universities to the regional economy can take different forms ranging from formal research collaborations to consultancy and informal personal connections. One of the knowledge communication channels drawing substantial interest of both researchers and regional policy makers is academic spin-off firm formation. According to the concept of the “academic entrepreneur” (Etzkowitz) university spin-off firm formation has grown naturally from the academic culture of the US where professors traditionally behave very much like entrepreneurs while setting up and maintaining research labs, hiring research assistants, “marketing” research results in conferences and publications or networking with colleagues and funding agencies. Spinning off a company is just a step forward from such entrepreneurial tasks of academics. Thus according to this concept academic motivations are main drivers in university spin-off firm formation in the US. Despite this challenging view the empirical literature pays relatively little attention to the particular “academic” features of university spin-offs and rarely considers the specificities of university entrepreneurship most notably the role of scientists as entrepreneurs. Empirical evidence suggests that Europe performs less successfully than the US in transferring knowledge from university labs to the regional economy via spin-off companies. One potential reason behind this difference is that institutions that determine the continental European research system hold back the emergence of academic entrepreneurs. Thus it is the main research question in our paper whether those specific “academic” drivers behind university spin-off firm formation are present at all in the continental European context. The related question is whether professional characteristics of the academics, their social capital, the norms of academia and the academic and business environment support or hinder these academic motivations? This paper is based on interviews carried out with university researchers who actively participate in firm formation in Hungary. Hungary is an excellent European case since the features of its university system are rooted in the continental (mainly German) tradition, but it also inherits some characteristics from the even more centralized socialist (soviet) tradition. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1451&r=geo |
| By: | Ari Tarigan; Stian Bayer; Christin Berg |
| Abstract: | The growth and expansion of commercial locations followed by urban sprawl and significant change in demographic and socio-demographic characteristics of urban resident have taken place in the Stavanger region, Norway - partly due to its role as 'the Petroleum Capital of Norway'. Most notable evidence are: (1) suburbanisation of employment due to the rapid development of the petroleum-based businesses, manufacturing companies and service enterprises in the region and its satellite region; (2) increased labour force participation, in particular by skilled workers and women; (3) growing proportion of immigration from inter-region of Norway as well as international, responding its dynamic labour market; (4) general increases in income; (5) changing population structure caused by significant percentage of young professional individuals; (6) and also great proportion of auto ownership and auto dependency. For example, the local authority has developed the industrial parks, known as the Forus area which is situated in the south-west of the Stavanger city centre. Currently, there are more than 1200 businesses located in this area and this provides opportunities for more than 24000 professionals, indicating that its employment density is extremely high. This, however, means that auto dependency of the Forus area-based commuters has reached by nearly 82 % of total mode choices used. The effects of industrialisation in suburbs on travel behavior are complex and not clear yet. One argues that suburbanisation of employment is inevitable in recent era in order to provide better accessibility of jobs and to reduce attractiveness of city centre in the same time. Therefore, how local authority connects their residents and workplaces and to break dependency on auto is the issue since commuters tend to use auto. This case is more obvious in particular if the quality of installed transport infrastructure is relatively poor. Whiles, others recommend jobs-housing balance supported by mixed-zone policy to control negative impacts of workplace sprawl. Allowing urbanisation of employment alone without considering travel distance balance leads to a less sustainable travel patterns because the higher the commuting distance the much more likely individuals tend to be depending on auto. This study is an attempt to determine the effects of suburbanisation of employment on commuting travel patterns. The questions raised are: Does suburbanisation of employment lead to an increase of commuting travel time (and distance), auto use, energy consumption, and the spatial extension of their action space? If so, who still have more sustainable commuting travel patterns? Who don't? Also, how sustainable is their commuting travel patterns compared to other groups of commuter in the region? Which factors tend influence auto dependency? The focus of this study is on commuters. Results of travel behaviour survey in the Stavanger area, conducted in summer 2008, are examined in this study to evaluate the effects of suburbanisation of employment on travel. The study depicts the commuters in the Forus area as the sample size and compares its behavioural patterns with the city centre-based commuters of the Stavanger region and the other commuters who reside in between the city centre and the Forus area. A set of multivariate analyses and other statistical tools are utilised to examine at the individual level, with auto ownership, public transport use, travel distance and travel time performed as its dependent variables. Using the results it is shown who tends to commute longer and who don't. Also factors that influence auto dependency are captured and the characteristics of the sustainable commuters are identified. Evaluating this policy location is necessary as a study reported that it may be pragmatically and politically more acceptable to change policies in primarily employment areas, because the users of those areas may have fewer complaints about more intense development than residential users typically do. In addition, the resultant model system is applied in a scenario analysis to forecast possible changes in future auto travel that will follow hypothetical spatial changes in the Stavanger region. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1648&r=geo |
| By: | Renato Garcia; Veneziano Araujo; Suelene Mascarini |
| Abstract: | It is widely recognized in the literature that the clustering of firms can generate benefits for the local firms, especially in terms of the creation and diffusion of knowledge among producers. One of the main sources of this new knowledge is the academic research, which can contribute to the innovative efforts of the firms, mainly when researchers in university and industry can cooperate by build joint research projects. Many authors (Audrescht and Feldman, 1996; Acs and Varga, 2005; Breschi and Lissoni, 2009) have shown that academic research is positively correlated with firms’ innovation at the geographical level. There are two reasons that are pointed out for this correlation. First, there are many ways in which knowledge generated by academic research can spill over to the firms, such as papers, patents and informal contacts. Second, geographical proximity can encourage cooperation between academic researchers and the R&D staff in the firms. Based on these statements, it was done an empirical research by using data from the Brazilian Research Council (CNPq), collected at the CNPq Directory of Research Groups of Brazilian universities. This database allows the identification of 2,151 interactive research groups, among 19,470, that declared that they have interactions with 3,068 firms. By the localization of both firms and university research groups, it was possible to gather information about the geographical pattern of university-industry linkages. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p761&r=geo |
| By: | Jaanika Merik¸ll; Helen Poltim‰e; Tiiu Paas |
| Abstract: | The process of European integration has introduced a valuable empirical example on the impact of economic integration on income convergence. Many empirical papers confirm the income convergence within the new member states and between the new and old members. At the same time it is found that the main contribution to economic growth in these catching-up countries comes from the total factor productivity growth (TFP), which motivates us to take a deeper look on the factors behind TFP developments. The objective of this paper is to shed light on the characteristics behind the productivity development in the new EU member countries. It may be generalised that the productivity development of a country, industry or firm is determined by two main factors: its own effort to develop new technologies and some external technology pool. The ability to internalize the latter into the own productivity growth depends again on many factors like: various technology diffusion channels as foreign direct investment (FDI); import and export; absorptive capacity and geographic proximity. There is a vast empirical literature on drivers of productivity and productivity spillovers, but up to our knowledge there is no comparative analysis on CEE countries. The CEE countries are typical middle income countries that do not devote many resources on own R&D, but due to the common market have presumably benefited a lot from the technology pool of the neighbouring high-income EU members. Our paper contributes to the literature by investigating comparatively the eight EU members with former Soviet background and controlling for geographical proximity. We compose a 2-digit NACE industry-level data set over the time-span of 1995-2007 and employ a dynamic panel data analysis methods suggested by Arellano-Bover/Blundell-Bond. The preliminary results indicate that compared to studies on high-income countries CEE countries have benefited relatively more from foreign R&D stock and this effect is the strongest for small countries. Our analysis shows also that the geographical proximity to the high-income countries matters and within the EU geographic proximity is a better technology diffusion channel than trade flows. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p931&r=geo |
| By: | Rafael Boix Domenech; Luciana Lazzeretti; Francesco Capone; Lisa De Propris; Daniel Sanchez |
| Abstract: | The creative economy is a holistic and multidisciplinary concept that deals with the interaction between economics, culture and technology, and centred on the production of creative contents in goods and services. One of the most relevant dimensions of creativity is the territorial one. Despite the emphasis put on the theoretical definition of creativity, the measurement of creative industries and the use of these concepts in macro units as well as in isolated case studies, it is necessary to strengthen comparative research for the identification and analysis of the kind of creativity embedded in the territory, its determinants and its patterns of concentration. This compared research relies on the measurement of the creative industries and the identification of their territorial patterns of distribution in the local production systems of five European countries: Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Spain and Portugal. Creative local production systems are identified in these countries departing from local labour markets as territorial units, firms and jobs in creative industries, and focusing on two different kinds of creative industries: traditional cultural industries and technology-related creative industries. The results show that creative industries are more important in some countries like Italy and the United Kingdom, and that their spatial patterns of distribution are significantly different across countries, where three basic models emerge: distributed, concentrated and polarized. The implications of these patterns on the analysis of creative industries as well as on the design and implementation of policies are discussed. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1501&r=geo |