This paper reviews almost four decades of contributions on the subject of supervised regionalization methods. These methods aggregate a set of areas into a predefined number of spatially contiguous regions while optimizing certain aggregation criteria. The authors present a taxonomic scheme that classifies a wide range of regionalization methods into eight groups, based on the strategy applied for satisfying the spatial contiguity constraint. The paper concludes by providing a qualitative comparison of these groups in terms of a set of certain characteristics, and by suggesting future lines of research for extending and improving these methods.

This article examines the occupational mobility of immigrants between their countries of origin and Spain on the basis of one of the few surveys available internationally with longitudinal information on immigrant employment in home and host countries. The evidence shows that the occupational status of immigrants in the Spanish labour market is, in general, substantially worse than in their countries of origin. The severe loss of occupational status experienced by immigrants is explained by the combined effect of the intense initial downgrading they experience when entering the Spanish labour market and their very slow occupational progress during their stay in Spain. These findings are more in line with the segmented assimilation theory, which suggests a limited or blocked immigrant occupational mobility, than with the assimilation theory, which predicts a U-shaped evolution in the occupational status of immigrants between their home and host countries. As a result, the Spanish case contrasts sharply with previous evidence for other advanced countries, which tends to support the assimilation perspective. Finally, the empirical evidence suggests that one of the elements impeding the occupational mobility of immigrants in Spain is the significant size of the secondary segment of the labour market, which restricts immigrants' opportunities mainly to low-status occupations.

Due to its ageing population and low birth rates, the European Union (EU) will need to import foreign labour in the next decades. In this context, the EU neighbouring countries (ENC) are the main countries of origin and transit of legal and irregular migration towards Europe. Their economic, cultural, and historical links also make them an important potential source of labour. The objective of this paper is to analyse past and future trends in ENC-EU bilateral migration relationships. With this aim, we specify and estimate a gravity model for nearly 200 countries between 1960 and 2010. Next, we use the model to obtain medium-run migration forecasts. Our results show a clear increase in migratory pressures from ENC to the EU in the near future, but probably lower than initially expected.

This article carries out an empirical examination of the origin of the differences between immigrant and native-born wage structures in the Spanish labour market. Especial attention is given in the analysis to the role played by occupational and workplace segregation of immigrants. Legal immigrants from developing countries exhibit lower mean wages and a more compressed wage structure than native-born workers. By contrast, immigrants from developed countries display higher mean wages and a more dispersed wage structure. The main empirical finding is that the disparities in the wage distributions for the native-born and both groups of immigrants are largely explained by their different observed characteristics, with a particularly important influence in this context of workplace and, particularly, occupational segregation.

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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 article analyses the importance of labour market institutions and, in particular, collective wage bargaining in shaping regional wage differences in the Spanish labour market. Using microdata from the Spanish Structure of Earnings Survey, our results reveal that there are significant inter-regional wage differences for similarly skilled workers. These differences are present throughout the whole wage structure and can be explained by both competitive and noncompetitive factors, such as an insufficient competition in product markets. In this context, industry-level collective bargaining plays a major role in accounting for regional wage differences, a role that in the Spanish case is enhanced due to its unusual regional dimension.Keywords: Wage structure; regional wage differences; collective bargaining. JEL codes: J31, J50.RESUMEN: Este trabajo analiza la importancia de las instituciones del mercado de trabajo y, en particular, el sistema de negociación colectiva en la explicación de las diferencias salariales regionales en el mercado de trabajo español. Los resultados obtenidos a partir de información microeconómica de la Encuesta de Estructura Salarial muestran la existencia de apreciables diferencias salariales entre las regiones españolas para trabajadores con habilidades productivas observadas similares. Estas diferencias salariales están presentes a lo largo de toda la estructura salarial y se explican por factores competitivos y por factores no competitivos, como la insuficiente competencia en el mercado de productos. En este contexto, la negociación colectiva sectorial es en gran medida la responsable de la diferenciación salarial entre territorios, lo que resulta facilitado por la vertiente territorial que caracteriza al sistema español de negociación colectiva Palabras clave: Estructura salarial, diferencias salariales regionales, negociación colectiva.