No abstract

No abstract

Research on convergence deals with the question of whether regional disparities are decreasing over time. Aiming to decompose EU disparities covering regions of all levels, this paper fills the gap of the empirical research on convergence in the EU in the following ways: (i) the research updates the assessment of regional disparities in the EU emphasizing, but not limited to, the analysis at the NUTS 3 level; (ii) based on a constructed three-level Theil index, the research decomposes EU disparities into between-country, within-country at the NUTS 2 level, and within the NUTS 2 region at the NUTS 3 level components, covering the period of 1995-2014 and all EU regions, (iii) it examines the linkages between the development of innovation and technology, sustainability, and evolution of disparities. Our main findings suggest that convergence in the EU is still present at different regional levels, but its speed is slowing down. Total EU disparities were decreasing mainly because of reducing disparities between member states. At the same time, in the majority of EU member states, old and new, within-country disparities were growing at all regional levels, and now within-country disparities account for almost two-fifths of total EU disparities.

This paper analyses theoretical and empirical scientific literature about the impact of technological innovations on unemployment, considering the former as a key driver of long-term productivity and economic growth. Using panel data from 25 European countries for the period of 2000-2012, we aim to examine whether technological innovations affect unemployment. We used triadic patent families per million inhabitants as our main proxy for technological innovations, as well as other unemployment controls, in our model, which were estimated using System Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM). Finding no significant relationship between technological innovations and unemployment in our base estimation, we re-estimated it testing the impact with a time lag as well as using alternative proxies for technological innovations. Overall, the research estimations do not suggest that technological innovations have an effect on unemployment.

No abstract