			Home About us Contact

EU Regions (eu + regions)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	50%

Selected Abstracts

MIND THE GAP: UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE NEW EU REGIONS

JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, Issue 1 2008
Anna Maria Ferragina
Abstract The paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on regional unemployment during transition in Central and Eastern Europe. The focus is on optimal speed of transition (OST) models and on comparison of them with the neo-classical tradition. In the typical neo-classical models, spatial differences essentially arise as a consequence of supply side constraints and institutional rigidities. Slow-growth, high-unemployment regions are those with backward economic structures and constraints on factors mobility contribute to making differences persistent. However, such explanations leave the question unanswered of how unemployment differences arise in the first place. Economic transition provides an excellent testing ground to answer this question. Pre-figuring an empirical law, the OST literature finds that the high degree of labour turnover of high unemployment regions is associated with a high rate of industrial restructuring and, consequently, that low unemployment may be achieved by implementing transition more gradually. Moreover, international trade, foreign direct investment and various agglomeration factors help explain the success of capital cities compared to peripheral towns and rural areas in achieving low unemployment. The evidence of the empirical literature on supply side factors suggests that wage flexibility in Central and Eastern Europe is not lower than in other EU countries, while labour mobility seems to reinforce rather than change the spatial pattern of unemployment. [source]

Empirical growth models with spatial effects*

PAPERS IN REGIONAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2006
Bernard Fingleton
Spatial spillovers; regional productivity; spatial econometrics; EU regions Abstract., Recent contributions to the regional science literature have considered spatial effects in empirical growth specifications. In the case of spatial dependence, following theoretical arguments from new economic geography, and endogenous growth models, this phenomenon has been associated with the existence of externalities that cross regional borders. However, despite the general consensus that interactions or externalities are likely to be the major source of spatial dependence, they have been modelled in a rather ad hoc manner in most existing empirical studies. In contrast, we advocate basing the analysis on structural growth models which include externalities across economies, applying the appropriate spatial econometrics tools to test for their presence and estimate the magnitude of these externalities in the real world. [source]

Some reflections concerning GDP, regional convergence and European cohesion policy

REGIONAL SCIENCE POLICY AND PRACTICE, Issue 1 2008
N. De Michelis
regional policy; cohesion policy; regional convergence; European Union Abstract The main objectives of the European cohesion policy have often been translated as the promotion of convergence between EU regions, which is most frequently measured as the decrease in disparities between the levels of regional GDP per head. This type of convergence has even become a major aspect in assessing the effectiveness of European cohesion policy. This paper first discusses the capacity of conventional convergence measures to capture the evolution of regional disparities in Europe. It then reflects on the information conveyed by this type of analysis concerning the effectiveness of cohesion policy. [source]

New economic geography meets Comecon

THE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 2 2006
Regional wages, industry location in central Europe
EU regions; market access; new economic geography; Comecon hypothesis Abstract We analyse the internal spatial wage and employment structures of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, using regional data for 1996,2000. A new economic geography model predicts wage gradients and specialization patterns that are smoothly related to the regions' relative market access. As an alternative, we formulate a ,Comecon hypothesis', according to which wages and sectoral location are not systematically related to market access except for discrete concentrations in capital regions. Estimations support both the NEG (new economic geography) prediction and the Comecon hypothesis. However, when we compare internal wage and employment gradients of the five new member states with those of Western European countries, we find that the former are marked by significantly stronger discrete concentrations of wages and service employment in their capital regions, confirming the ongoing relevance of the Comecon hypothesis. [source]