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.

The insurance industry is concerned with the detection of fraudulent behavior. The number of automobile claims involving some kind of suspicious circumstance is high and has become a subject of major interest for companies. This article demonstrates the performance of binary choice models for fraud detection and implements models for misclassification in the response variable. A database from the Spanish insurance market that contains honest and fraudulent claims is used. The estimation of the probability of omission provides an estimate of the percentage of fraudulent claims that are not detected by the logistic regression model.

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. Abstract: This paper proposes a set of tools for analysing the regional distribution of unemployment. As we were interested in the characteristics of the distribution as a whole, results from a traditional regression analysis were complemented with those obtained by estimating its external shape before and after being conditioned to factors underlying regional unemployment. In addition, the paper specifically considers the spatial characteristics of the distribution, and the empirical model developed in order to determine explanatory factors includes spatial effects. This framework is applied to the study of the provincial distribution of unemployment rates in Spain. Results point to increasing spatial dependence in the distribution of regional unemployment rates, and a change in the factors causing regional differentials over the last decade. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may

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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. ABSTRACT. An interesting feature of the dynamics of unemployment in the EU economies is that while the aggregate unemployment rates move with the business cycle, its regional distribution seems to remain quite stable or tends to a sort of polarisation. This paper discusses different hypotheses that have been proposed to explain heterogeneity in the spatial distribution of unemployment, and performs an empirical analysis for the Spanish provinces. Terms of use: Documents inThe paper assesses the effects of skill and sectoral mismatch, and demographic factors in explaining spatial differences in unemployment rates. Although regional differences in sectoral specialisation and skills account for some of the dispersion in the distribution in the mid-eighties, they have no role in explaining the one today. In turn, demography became more important at the end of the period, though it is not able to explain completely the emergence of (at least) two clusters of regions with separate unemployment rates.

This article analyses the link between human capital and regional economic growth in the European Union. Using various indicators of human capital calculated from census microdata, we conclude that the recent economic performance of European regions is associated with an increase in overeducation. In fact, measures of educational mismatch seem to be more strongly connected to regional economic performance than do other traditional measures of human capital stock.Keywords: Regional economic growth, human capital, educational mismatch, overeducation.JEL Classification: O18, O47, R23 CRECIMIENTO ECONÓMICO REGIONAL Y CAPITAL HUMANO: EL PAPEL DE LA SOBREEDUCACIÓNResumen: El artículo analiza la relación existente entre el capital humano y el crecimiento económico regional en la Unión Europea. A partir de la consideración de varios indicadores de capital humano calculado a partir de microdatos de distintos censos, concluimos que el crecimiento económico de las regiones europeas está asociado con un incremento en la sobreeducación. De hecho, las medidas de desajuste educativo parecen estar más relacionadas con el crecimiento económico regional que otras medidas tradicionales de dotación de capital humano.3

This paper analyses the differential impact of human capital, in terms of different levels of schooling, on regional productivity and convergence. The potential existence of geographical spillovers of human capital is also considered by applying spatial panel data techniques. The empirical analysis of Spanish provinces between 1980 and 2007 confirms the positive impact of human capital on regional productivity and convergence, but reveals no evidence of any positive geographical spillovers of human capital. In fact, in some specifications the spatial lag presented by tertiary studies has a negative effect on the variables under consideration.

Commuting exists because an important fraction of workers in developed countriesdo not live close to their workplaces, but at long distances from them, so that they must travel to their jobs and then back home daily. This paper studies commuting in Catalonia (a Spanish region) for the 1986-91 period. We introduce the main facts of commuting in Catalonia by a descriptive analysis using several statistical methods, rst on its sectoral side (de-composing the Catalonian economy into 24 sectors), then on its territorial side (dividing Catalonia in 16 homogeneous territorial units called regions) and an analysis of the professional categories. Then, we comment brie y on the theory of residential location, which provides us with the theoretical framework needed for the study of commuting. The last part of the paper consists of an estimation of commuting using a logit model with individual data from the 1991 Spanish Population Census, in order to select the most relevant variables and estimate their effect on commuting.