Abstract. Deepening in the European Union (EU) integration process has enhanced the question of economic disparities at a regional level. The convergence process observed until the late seventies was exhausted onwards in coincidence with important changes in the economic activity. The paper shows how these factors would have provoked a regional differenciated response that, despite being important, would have not strengthened the decrease in regional inequalities. We use an alternative and (in our opinion) richer approach to the traditional convergence analysis, where the evolution of the whole regional distribution is what matters and not that of a representative economy. Moreover, when analysing inequalities among regional economies, the geographical space acquire an outstanding role. Hence, we apply spatial association tests and relate them to the convergence analysis.Resum. El avance en el proceso de integración ha aumentado el interés por la evolución de las disparidades económicas entre las regiones de la Unión Europea.El proceso de convergencia observado hasta finales de los setenta parece haberse agotado, coincidiendo con importantes cambios en el desarrollo de la actividad económica. El trabajo muestra como estos factores habrían provocado una respuesta regional diferenciada que, pese a ser importante, no habría contribuido a la disminución de las disparidades. En el trabajo se utiliza una aproximación alternativa a la empleada en el tradicional análisis de convergencia, donde lo que se considera es la evolución de la totalidad de la distribución y no unicamente aquélla de una economía representativa. Adicionalmente, cuando se estudian las disparidades entre economías regionales, el espacio adquiere un papel destacado.Por ello se aplican contrastes de asociación espacial y se relacionan con el análisis de convergencia. KEY WORDS: Convergence, EU regions, Distribution dynamics JEL classification: O40, O52, R12¡Error!Marcador no definido. IntroductionThe topic of regional economic convergence has generated considerable interest in recent years. In the case of the EU this interest has been enhanced by the deepening and widening in the integration process. It is well known that the question of regional economic disparities acquired a relevant status both from an economic and political point of view with the accession of Greece, Spain andPortugal. The performance of these economies since then, as a whole as well as that of each one of their regions, might be seen as an empirical evidence of the impact of the integration process. In this sense, the implementation of the Single European Market and the Economic and Monetary Union might play an important role in the evolution of regional disparities, even though a consensus of their effects is far from being achieved from a theoretical point of view (Abraham and Van Rompuy 1995). In any case, there is a general agreement in the existence of a decrease in regional inequalities (ie convergence) from the fifties to the seventies and a relative stagnation afterwards...

This paper models externalities of production across regional economies. Under the assumption that knowledge diffuses without political or administrative barriers, we derive externalities that affect the steady state and the process of growth of each economy. The empirical counterpart of the reduced form equation summarizing the process of growth allows us to test for the presence of regional spillovers and to measure their magnitude. Our results for a sample of European regions show that spillovers are far from negligible, are robust to the consideration of variables within each region, and may cause nondecreasing returns at the spatial aggregate level. The paper also relates previous empirical evidence on spatial dependence in growth studies to the externalities modeled here.

Royuela V., Moreno R. and Vaya E. Influence of quality-of-life on urban growth: a case study of Barcelona, Spain, Regional Studies. There are several determinants that influence household location decisions. More concretely, the recent economic literature assigns an increasingly important role to the variables governing quality-of-life. Nevertheless, the spatial stationarity of the parameters is implicitly assumed in most studies. The paper analyses the role of quality-of-life in urban economics and tests for the spatial stationarity of the relationship between city growth and quality-of-life. [image omitted] Royuela V., Moreno R. et Vaya E. L'impact de la qualite de la vie sur la croissance urbaine, Regional Studies. Nombreuses sont les determinants du choix d'emplacement des menages. Essentiellement, la documentation economique recente accorde un role de plus en plus important aux variables qui determinent la qualite de la vie. Neanmoins, la plupart des etudes supposent implicitement une geographie stationnaire des parametres. On cherche a analyser le role de la qualite de la vie dans l'economie urbaine et on fait des analyses pour deceler la geographie stationnaire du rapport entre la croissance urbaine et la qualite de la vie. Qualite de la vie Economie urbaine Croissance urbaine Regressions geographiques ponderees Royuela V., Moreno R. und Vaya E. Der Einfluss der Lebensqualitat auf das Wachstum von Stadten. Eine Fallstudie von Barcelona, Regional Studies. Die Entscheidung fur den Standort von Haushalten wird von mehreren Determinanten beeinflusst. Insbesondere wird in der aktuellen Wirtschaftsliteratur den fur die Lebensqualitat ausschlaggebenden Variablen ein zunehmend hoher Stellenwert eingeraumt. Allerdings wird in den meisten Studien fur diese Parameter implizit eine raumliche Unveranderlichkeit angenommen. In diesem Beitrag analysieren wir die Rolle der Lebensqualitat in der Okonomie von Stadten und uberprufen die raumliche Unveranderlichkeit der Beziehung zwischen Stadtwachstum und Lebensqualitat. Lebensqualitat Okonomie von Stadten Stadtwachstum Geografisch gewichtete Regressionen Royuela V., Moreno R. y Vaya E. La influencia de la calidad de vida en el crecimiento urbano. Estudio del caso de Barcelona, Regional Studies. La decision de elegir el lugar de la vivienda depende de varios factores determinantes. En concreto, la reciente literatura economica asigna un papel cada vez mas importante a las variables que gobiernan la calidad de vida. Sin embargo, en la mayoria de estudios se supone implicitamente la estacionalidad espacial de los parametros. Aqui analizamos el papel de la calidad de vida en la economia urbana y comprobamos la estacionalidad espacial de la relacion entre el crecimiento de las ciudades y la calidad de vida. Calidad de vida Economia urbana Crecimiento de las ciudades Regresiones ponderadas geograficamenteQuality-of-life, Urban economics, City growth, Geographically weighted regressions,

This article analyses the impact that R&D expenditures and intra-and inter-industry externalities have on the performance of Spanish firms. Despite the extensive literature studying the relationship between innovation and productivity, there are far fewer studies in this particular area examining the importance of sectoral externalities, especially focused on Spain. One novelty of this study, conducted for the industrial and service sectors, is that we also consider the technology level of the sector in which the firm operates and firm size. The database used is the Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC). It comprises 9,985 firms over the period 2004-2009 and has been used infrequently for studies of this type. The Olley and Pakes (1996) estimator is adopted in order to account for both simultaneity and selection biases providing consistent estimates. The results suggest that, unlike previous studies, R&D expenditures do not have a direct impact on firm performance. By contrast, spillovers do. In particular, intra-industry externalities present a positive and significant effect in low-tech and large firms. Inter-industry externalities, however, present an ambiguous effect and there appears to be no specific pattern of behaviour associated with technology level or firm size.

Recent theoretical models of economic growth have emphasised the role of external effects on the accumulation of factors of production. Although most of the literature has considered the externalities across firms within a region, in this paper we go a step further and consider the possibility that these externalities cross the barriers of regional economies. We assess the role of these external effects in explaining growth and economic convergence. We present a simple growth model, which includes externalities across economies, developing a methodology for testing their existence and estimating their strength. In our view, spatial econometrics is naturally suited to an empirical consideration of these externalities. We obtain evidence on the presence of significant externalities both across Spanish and European regions.Resumen: Diversos modelos han destacado recientemente el papel de los efectos externos en la acumulación de los factores productivos a la hora de explicar el crecimiento económico. Sin embargo, la mayor parte de la literatura se ha centrado en el estudio de spillovers entre los agentes productivos de una misma economía. Por el contrario, en este trabajo se considera la posibilidad de que dichas externalidades traspasen las fronteras de las economías, analizando sus consecuencias sobre los procesos de crecimiento y convergencia, especialmente en el caso regional. Para ello, se presenta un sencillo modelo de crecimiento que incorpora el supuesto de externalidades entre regiones, desarrollando posteriormente una metodología que permite contrastar la existencia de estas últimas y estimar su intensidad. En este sentido, la econometría espacial se revela como la vía natural para la consideración empírica de dichas externalidades. En el trabajo se ha obtenido evidencia a favor de la presencia de externalidades significativas entre las regiones españolas y europeas.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Abstract:This paper addresses the role of external effects in the process of production. We define two types of external effects: those derived from inputs external to the firm but which affect its production, and those derived from externalities that cross the barriers of a given economy. Using a production function that explicitly considers the presence of both types of external effects, we derive a cost function by application of the duality theory. This cost function includes the external effects and at the same time it takes into consideration the different relationships between inputs. Two types of externalities across economies are then addressed: those arising from interactions across regions and those due to linkages across industries. We propose the application of spatial econometric techniques to test for the presence of such spillovers. For regional externalities, we focus on the physical interaction between regions, while sectoral interdependencies are obtained through the use of input-output relationships. Some specific characteristics of the resulting empirical model (cross-section and time-series dimension of the data and nonlinearity in some of the parameters) are discussed from a spatial viewpoint. We apply this framework to the case of manufacturing industries in the Spanish regional economies from 1980 to 1991. 1 "The Whole is more than the sum of the parts, in that, not only does the interrelation of parts bring out latent characteristics in each, as in any complex, but the complex as a whole takes on a new character not explainable out of the parts" (Hartshorne, 1939).

This article shows the methodology and the main figures of the local and regional economic impact generated by cruise activity. This article is pioneering in combining different issues: estimating the impact of the cruise port activity, presenting these impacts disaggregated at a sectoral level, using a rigorous methodology and carrying out extensive fieldwork. It is demonstrated that all sectors, not just traditional tourism-related sectors, benefit from cruise tourism. In order to test and apply our methodology we focus the analysis in The Port of Barcelona, which has become the leading cruise port in the Mediterranean area.

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