What drives unemployment disparities in European regions? A dynamic spatial panel approach

We investigate whether economic functional regions capture spatial clustering of core economic indicators better than administrative regions. For this purpose, we use hierarchical linear models to measure the degree of homogenization of different regional delineations. Our results for Germany show that economic functional regions tend to capture spatial clustering better than administrative ones. However, a considerable amount of clustering at a lower aggregation level cannot be accounted for by economic functional regions, especially around metropolitan centres. Furthermore, economic functional regions, which depict commuting interrelations well, are less able to capture spatial homogenization than other economic functional delineations.

Section: Spatial Interdependencies and Spatial Clusteringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are functional regions more homogeneous than administrative regions? A test using hierarchical linear models

Wicht

Kropp

Schwengler

2020

“…All this illustrates not just an expansion of the search for factors to explain the disparities, but also analyses including innovations in terms of analytical techniques. From this point of view, some contributions must be specially considered: Ríos () what drives unemployment disparities in European regions; Ramos, Suriñach, and Artís () linked human capital spillovers with regional productivity and convergence; Castells‐Quintana and Royuela () provided an excellent analysis of the connections between agglomeration, inequality and economic growth and Márquez, Ramajo, and Hewings () proposed a simple but innovative way to measure the role of geographical location in economic inequality. The novelty is that they decomposed global inequality into its within‐country and between‐country components, assessing which part of these components could be related to neighbourhood factors.…”

Section: Recent Developments Of Regional Studies: Continuity and Chanmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Others have considered the "persistence" of inequalities and their causes and the additional determinants of regional productivity, such as infrastructures, human capital,(De la Fuente, 2009;Montes-Sola, Faiña, & López-Rodriguez, 2016;Rodríguez-López, Martínez-López, & Romero-Avila, 2009), R&D and innovation (like did the IVIE group) and the role of the entrepreneurs in regional development, a topic not sufficiently clarified.All this illustrates not just an expansion of the search for factors to explain the disparities, but also analyses including innovations in terms of analytical techniques. From this point of view, some contributions must be specially considered:Ríos (2017) what drives unemployment disparities in European regions; Ramos, Suriñach, and Artís (2010) linked human capital spillovers with regional productivity and convergence;Castells-Quintana and Royuela (2014) provided an excellent analysis of the connections between agglomeration, inequality and economic growth andMárquez, Ramajo, and Hewings (2017) proposed a simple but innovative way to measure the role of geographical location in economic inequality. The novelty is that they decomposed global inequality into its within-country and between-country components, assessing which part of these components could be related to neighbourhood factors.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Development, contributions and trends in regional studies in Spain: An overview

Cuadrado‐Roura

2020

The aim of this paper is to show the development of regional and urban studies in Spain, pointing out the main factors that have influenced such development, the topics analysed by the Spanish researchers and why Spain has today a remarkable position in the field of regional science. Regional problems have always taken up a very important place among the concerns of the Spanish society. This has been closely linked to longstanding historical and internal political conflicts. But, leaving aside some very interesting contributions and territorial projects developed in the past, the research on regional issues emerged really in the 1960s and the consolidation phase took place from 1975 to 2000, as explained in Sections 2 and 3. From the beginning of this century the field has received a clear thrust, supported by a new generation of economists and geographers. The increasing presence of Spanish researchers in international congresses, workshops and specialized journals enable to state that Spain has reached a similar level as in more advanced countries. Section 4 collects the most outstanding topics and innovative contributions made from 2000 to now. A short final note (section 5) points out some final remarks and why a positive continuity of the progress observed can be expected.

“…Another part of empirical research is focused on regional differences in the unemployment level, see e.g. (Martin 1997;Taylor and Bradley 1997;Baddeley et al 1998;Brueckner and Zenou 2003;Bornhorst and Commander 2004;Novotný and Nosek 2012;Patuelli et al 2012;Huber 2013;López-Bazo and Motellón 2013;Zierahn 2013;Yang 2014;Zeilstra and Elhorst 2014;Granato et al 2015;Beyer and Stemmer 2016;Rios 2016). As Fischer and Nijkamp (2014, p. xxviii) argue, 'spatial interdependencies have always been at the heart of regional science research'.…”

Section: Economic Geography and Regional Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to the neo-liberal theory, on the other hand, informal employment results from excessive taxes and too much interference in the free market. The institutional asymmetry explanation is partly similar, in that it proposes that participation in the informal economy is higher if the asymmetry between the codified laws and regulations of the formal institutions (state morality) and the unwritten rules of the informal institutions (civic morality) is greater (Williams and Horodnic 2015a, 2015b, 2016. In contrast, the political economy theory assumes that informal employment is the result of too little state intervention and inadequate welfare arrangements.…”

Section: Informal Employment Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Informal work in Poland – a regional approach

Nikulin

Sobiechowska-Ziegert

2018

In our paper we try to combine the theories explaining the prevalence of informal work, using a regional approach. Reviewing the literature, we observe that, there is no evidence to confirm that the relationships that occur in cross‐country comparisons remain significant when we use regional data and analyse cross‐regional variations. Our general question is therefore whether there is simply more informal work in less‐developed regions, as the modernization theory asserts. Our analysis concludes that there is limited correlation between the prevalence of informal work and a region's level of development, whereas there is a significant positive autocorrelation between the extent of informal work in the analysed voivodships in Poland.