An open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk Marsh, Ian William, Rincon-Aznar, Ana, Vecchi, Michela ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0129-6769 and Venturini, Francesco (2017) We see ICT spillovers everywhere but in the econometric evidence: a reassessment. Industrial and Corporate Change, 26 (6).

No abstract

We employ the EU KLEMS database to estimate the real rate of return to capital in 14 countries (11 in the EU, three outside the EU) in 10 branches of the market economy plus the market economy as a whole. Our measure of capital is an aggregate over seven types of asset: three ICT assets and four non-ICT assets. The real rate of return in the market economy does not vary very much across countries, the extremes being Spain (high) and Italy (low). The real rate appears to be trendless in most countries. Within each country however, the rate varies widely across the 10 branches, often being implausibly high or low. We also estimate the growth of capital services by two different methods: ex-post and ex-ante, and the contribution of capital to output growth by three methods: ex-post, ex-ante and hybrid. We argue that the ex ante method is theoretically preferred for estimating the growth of capital services while the hybrid method is theoretically preferred for estimating the contribution of capital to output growth. The ex-ante method uses an estimate of the required rate of return for each country instead of the actual, average rate of return to calculate user costs and also employs the expected growth of asset prices rather than the actual growth. These estimates are derived from exactly the same data as for the ex-post method, i.e. without any extraneous data being employed. For estimating the contribution of capital to output growth, the ex-ante method uses ex-ante profit as the weight, while both the ex-post and the hybrid method use ex-post profit. We find that the three methods produce very similar results at the market economy level. But differences are much larger at the branch level, particularly between the ex-post and ex-ante methods.

No abstract

The evaluation of the Single European Market requires a better knowledge of the level of integration both between and within the EU countries. While some institutions are pushing for greater integration between EU countries, others may be introducing—purposely or collaterally—additional barriers to interaction. Several reports have reported the high levels of market fragmentation prevailing within Spain. This paper aims to determine whether regional borders influenced the patterns of intra- and interregional trade between the 18 regions of Spain (Nuts 2) over a long period of time (1995–2017). While trade is more intense within regions than between them, our results suggest the presence of spatial and temporal heterogeneity in the estimated home bias. We also investigate empirically the effect that the quantity and quality of national, regional and local regulations have on the economic performance of firms, in both the industrial and the service sectors. We use different non-spatial and spatial-gravity models, which yield robust results.