towards an attention based view of the firm the central argument is that firm behavior is the result of how firms channel and distribute the attention of their decision makers what decision makers do depends on what issues and answers they focus their attention on what issues and answers they focus on depends on the specific situation and on how the firm s rules resources and relationships distribute various issues answers and decision makers into specific communications and procedures the paper develops these theoretical principles into a model of firm behavior and presents its implications for explaining firm behavior and adaptation 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

the curious case of corporate tax avoidance is it socially irresponsible in contrast to many aspects of the social responsibility of business csr scholarship has been largely silent on the issue of the payment of corporate tax this is curious because such tax payments are often considered a fundamental and easily measured example of a company s citizenship behavior however because the payment of corporate tax can often be legally avoided this activity represents a boundary condition for csr if the law and csr suggest that a company should pay its fair share of tax yet many successful companies actively avoid this social obligation should they be considered socially irresponsible this paper explores the issue of tax avoidance and the implications it has for any credible definition and measure of csr it also highlights an aspect of corporate practice that is deliberately hidden from public view

on the optimal design of place based policies a structural evaluation of eu regional transfers we quantify general equilibrium effects of place based policies in a multi region framework with population mobility trade and agglomeration economies using detailed data on eu transfers we infer the local effects of different transfer types on productivity income and transportation cost based on these estimates and the general equilibrium model we derive the spatial distribution of economic activity and the resulting aggregate welfare effects if i no transfers were paid and taxes set to zero ii transfers were distributed uniformly iii transfers were welfare optimally distributed characterizing the optimal distributions we reveal complementarities between transfer types and between transfers and local endowments

burr under the saddle how media coverage influences strategic change in this paper we introduce a new antecedent to the strategic change literature by examining the effect of media coverage on the extent of strategic change specifically we examine how negative media coverage may prompt firms to make changes to their resource allocations and then explore how the makeup of the board and firm performance can moderate this relationship we develop a theoretical framework to explain why media coverage may affect strategic change and then test our theory with a longitudinal analysis of 250 firms over a four year period the empirical results lend support to our theory of media influence on strategic change and suggest that the evaluations of firms by outside constituents may influence the decision making of executives

financial integration capital mobility and income convergence recent studies have found that capital moves uphill from poor to rich countries and brings little or no growth dividend when it does flow into poor economies we show that europe does not conform to this paradigm in the european experience of financial integration capital has flown from rich to poor countries and such inflows have been associated with significant acceleration of income convergence analysing broader samples of countries we find that downhill capital flows tend to be observed above certain thresholds in institutional quality and financial integration but europe remains different even when allowing for such threshold effects and its experience is similar to that of interstate flows within the united states our findings are consistent with the notion that financial diversification reduces countries incentives to save in order to self insure against specific shocks abdul abiad daniel leigh and ashoka mody

depressing dependence transfers and economic growth in the german states 1975 2005 abstractdepressing dependence transfers and economic growth in the german states 1975 2005 regional studies most countries pay substantial intergovernmental transfers to poor regions with the aim of achieving regional convergence consequently transfers should have a positive effect on economic growth however it is equally possible that transfers perpetuate underdevelopment this paper studies empirically the effect of intergovernmental transfers on economic growth with a panel of west german states over the period 1975 2005 the findings suggest that transfers do not foster economic growth presumably because the recipients use them to subsidize declining industries

do institutions matter for regional development rodriguez pose a do institutions matter for regional development regional studies this paper discusses whether institutions matter for regional development and how to integrate them in regional development strategies it is found that while institutions are crucial for economic development generating an institution based regional development strategy is likely to be undermined by the lack of definition of what are efficient institutions problems related to the measurement of institutions to their space and time variability to the difficulties in establishing the right mix of formal and informal institutions and to the endogeneity between institutions and economic development make one size fits all approaches to operationalizing institutions difficult the paper posits that in order to overcome these problems it is crucial to distinguish between the institutional environment and institutional arrangements that is to target not the institutions which shape the unique character of any territ

optimal urban population size national vs local economic efficiency this paper explores whether the population size of the seoul metropolitan area sma in korea is efficient in terms of the national economy to undertake this analysis a recursively dynamic interregional computable general equilibrium icge model with a population module is developed in this model the explicit costs and benefits of population growth are estimated by using the industrial value added and consumer price inflation functions for each region the counter factual analysis shows that national population decentralisation away from the sma is desirable for korea s economic growth korea s gdp is estimated to be maximised when the sma s national population share is at 39 per cent in the short term and 35 per cent in the long term however the sma government is likely to have incentive to maintain its population at around 40 per cent of the national population where per capita income at the regional not national level is maximised

active labour market policies and the efficiency of the european social fund in spanish regions abstractactive labour market policies and the efficiency of the european social fund in spanish regions regional studies this paper estimates the determinants of public expenditure on active labour market policies almps at the regional level using panel data from a sample of the 17 spanish regions 1989 2010 the estimations take into account endogeneity dynamics and spatial dependence among regions estimations outcome is interpreted with the help of a simple theoretical model of intergovernmental grants results reveal that the european social fund is not effective in its aim of promoting almp expenditure and show that rent seeking when regions compete to attract funds from a common pool provokes the opposite effect which is exacerbated in the presence of imitation

globalization and competitive strategies in european vulnerable regions affuso a capello r and fratesi u globalization and competitive strategies in european vulnerable regions regional studies this paper highlights the role played by structural economic features and industrial competitive strategies in the performance of a group of european regions defined as vulnerable because of their specialization in industries particularly exposed to international trade different growth patterns emerge among them the most successful regions are those with a strong presence of high value added functions of best performing vulnerable sectors but also with high structural funds expenditure on human resources moreover among the industrial strategies analysed it is found that the only winning strategy explaining higher productivity gains is industrial reconversion at the expense of employment growth affuso a capello r et fratesi u la mondialisation et les strategies competitives des regions europeennes vulnerables regional studies cet article cherche a souligner le rol

going nuts the effect of eu structural funds on regional performance the european union eu provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states to allow them to catch up with the eu average under the objective 1 scheme nuts2 regions with a per capita gdp level below 75 of the eu average qualify for structural funds transfers from the central eu budget this rule gives rise to a regression discontinuity design that exploits the discrete jump in the probability of eu transfer receipt at the 75 threshold for identification of causal effects of objective 1 treatment on outcome such as economic growth of eu regions we find positive per capita gdp growth effects of objective 1 transfers but no employment growth effects

perceptions and the politics of finance junk bonds and the regulatory seizure of first capital life in may 1991 one month after seizing executive life california regulators seized first capital life fclic both insurers were drexel clients with large junk bond holdings and both had experienced bank runs fclic s run followed regulators televised comments that its poor condition necessitated a substantial cash infusion yet fclic s statutory capital with junk bonds real estate and mortgages marked to market was far from lowest among major insurers with california policyholders it becomes lowest if junk bonds alone are marked to market at year end 1990 ignoring larger market declines in real estate mortgages and the junk bond market s 21 return in early 1991 our findings suggest a regulatory bias against junk bonds in the political backlash against the 1980s

a tale of an unwanted outcome transfers and local endowments of trust and cooperation abstract transfers can do good however they can also result in massive failures this paper presents a model that highlights the ambiguous nature of the impact of transfers on local endowments of social capital it then describes an empirical investigation that illustrates that the receipt of eu structural funds causes a deterioration of the endowments of trust and cooperation in the subsidized regions

a malmquist based approach to change in local economic well being murias p novello s and martinez roget f a malmquist based approach to change in local economic well being regional studies the focus on the multifaceted nature of well being has increased substantially in recent years this paper employs data envelopment analysis dea combined with the malmquist index to examine the temporal change in the economic well being of spanish provinces over the ten year period between 1996 and 2006 this method not only allows the aggregation of multiple indicators and the estimation of well being shifts over time but also shows the sources of variation in local economic well being the results seem to suggest that whilst economic well being has improved in the great majority of provinces this advancement stems largely from a more favourable environment than from the specific capacity of each province to reduce its relative distance from key benchmarks

complementing emu rethinking cohesion policy under emu the less competitive regions of the eu usually assumed to be peripheral have been widely expected to lose ground yet it is the core of the eu that so far has appeared to have suffered from the advent of the euro this paper looks at the processes behind regional divergence in the eu and presents evidence on recent and prospective trends as emu is consolidated bearing in mind that the imminent enlargement of the eu will radically change the political economy of the eu s efforts to assure cohesion policy issues are then discussed looking forward to the next renegotiation of the structural funds it is argued that difficult decisions have to be taken about the extent and character of eu policy the option of an open method of coordination for cohesion policy is put forward as a means of resolving some of the hard choices

the public sector and convergence with spatial interdependence empirical evidence from spain abstractwe propose a framework to analyse convergence between regions incorporating the public sector and technological knowledge spillovers in the context of a neoclassical growth model second we apply novel estimation methods pertaining to the spatial econometrics literature introducing a spatial durbin panel data model based on instrumental variables and maximum likelihood estimation our model makes it possible to analyse in terms of convergence the results obtained in spanish regions with the policies implemented during the period 1980 2011 the results support the idea that education and fiscal policies have a positive effect on regional development and cohesion therefore we can conclude that it is possible to obtain better results for regional convergence with higher rates of public investment in education and tax revenues we also obtain interesting results that confirm the existence of spillover effects in economic growth and public policies identifying their magnitude and significance

determinants of regional economic growth by quantile crespo cuaresma j foster n and stehrer r determinants of regional economic growth by quantile regional studies the robustness of growth determinants across european union regions is analysed using quantile regression using bayesian model averaging bma on the class of quantile regression models it is proposed that the set of relevant covariates is assessed allowing for different effects across growth quantiles the results indicate that the robust growth determinants differ across quantiles the set of robust variables includes physical investment when taking country fixed effects into account and skill endowment and initial gross domestic product per capita when not even when a variable is found to be robust across quantiles its estimated impact on growth is often found to vary across quantiles crespo cuaresma j foster n et stehrer r les determinants de la croissance economique par quantile regional studies a partir d une regression par quantile on analyse la solidite des determinant

undermining the principle of concentration european union regional policy and the socio economic disadvantage of european regions crescenzi r undermining the principle of concentration european union regional policy and the socio economic disadvantage of european regions regional studies this paper sets out to analyse the regional policy of the european union by assessing whether the actual distribution of funds to the regions undermines the principle of territorial concentration the empirical analysis shows that due to either political equilibriums or inaccurate assumptions about the most cost effective allocation of the funds the sources of structural disadvantage are more spatially concentrated than the funds devoted to compensating this disadvantage and reveals a weak association between socio economic disadvantage and european union funding corrections in allocation mechanisms are recommended in order to increase fund concentration and earmark resources more adequately to disadvantaged regions crescenzi r saper le principe de la concentration la politique regionale de l union europeenne et le desavantage socio econom

media legitimation effects in the market for initial public offerings in this study we argue that media provided information affects investors impressions of newly public firms in 225 initial public offerings ipos the volume of mediaprovided information had a negative diminishing relationship with underpricing and a positive diminishing relationship with stock turnover on the first day of trading the relationship between the tenor of media provided information and underpricing increases at a nonlinear rate and decreases similarly for turnover findings provide important evidence that publicly available information not only reflects ipos legitimacy but also adds to their legitimacy and influences investor behavior in the last 20 years an increasing amount of research on markets has been conducted from a social constructionist perspective emphasizing how social structures enhance the flow of useful and credible information that market participants use to reduce the uncertainty of market exchanges e g aldrich fiol 1994 zuckerman 1999 further recent organizational research has begun to stress the influence of information intermediaries such as financial analysts and the media on mar

collaboration in the boardroom behavioral and performance consequences of ceo board social ties empirical research has typically rested on the assumption that board independence from management enhances board effectiveness in administering firms the present study shows how and when a lack of social independence can increase board involvement and firm performance by raising the frequency of advice and counsel interactions between ceos and outside directors hypotheses were tested with original survey data from 243 ceos and 564 outside directors on behavioral processes and dynamics in management board relationships

evaluating the impact of the structural funds on objective 1 regions an exploratory discussion martin r and tyler p 2006 evaluating the impact of the structural funds on objective 1 regions an exploratory discussion regional studies 40 201 210 evaluation evidence on the impact of the structural funds on employment in objective 1 regions remains elusive this paper seeks to make a contribution to this task by evaluating the impact of european union regional policy on cumulative job creation in the least prosperous objective 1 regions at the nuts 2 level it adopts an evaluation methodology pioneered originally by moore and rhodes in 1973 in the uk while tentative it estimates that the cumulative effect of european union cohesion policy is around 1 million jobs as at 2002 which is a significant contribution despite the considerable methodological and measurement problems this paper aims to encourage further research to be undertaken in this important area objective 1 regions impact employment counterfactual determination martin r et tyler p 2006 evaluer l impact des fonds structu

financial accountability and european union cohesion policy davies s and polverari l financial accountability and european union cohesion policy regional studies many changes in european union cohesion policy since the late 1990s have been driven by the need to ensure and demonstrate financial accountability this paper examines how the increased emphasis on financial management control and audit in relation to the european union budget is reshaping the governance of cohesion policy as well as the instruments of financial accountability it also assesses the effects of these new instruments on financial flows and considers how these changes are perceived by policy makers lastly it explores the difficulties of assessing the impact of administrative changes on financial accountability in cohesion policy davies s et polverari l la responsabilite financiere et la politique de l union europeenne en faveur de la cohesion regional studies depuis la fin des annees 90 les nombreuses modifications a la politique de l union europeenne en faveur de la cohesion o

labour productivity in spain 1977 2002 this study examines the evolution of labour productivity across spanish regions during the period from 1977 to 2002 applying the kernel technique we estimate the effects of the transition process on labour productivity and its main sources we find that spanish regions experienced a major convergence process in labour productivity mostly driven by human capital in the 1977 1993 period conversely the dynamics of investment in physical capital appear to be neutral with respect to the transition dynamics of labour productivity finally from 1995 to 2002 no dynamic processes seemed to have taken place spanish regions exhibit a persistent relative position with established convergence clubs the human capital effect is less important and the investment in physical capital seems not to have a triggering effect on labour productivity growth

the collapse of first executive corporation junk bonds adverse publicity and the run on the bank phenomenon abstract in april 1991 regulators seized the major subsidiaries of first executive corporation fe an insurer that invested heavily in junk bonds during the junk bond market turmoil of 1989 1990 adverse publicity fueled a bank run at fe forcing a 4 billion portfolio liquidation before the market rose 50 60 in 1991 1992 more traditional insurers did not receive commensurate press coverage despite their substantial exposure to real estate declines which were roughly 2 5 times the junk bond decline seizure of fe s subsidiaries was defensible although fe would have become solvent within a year given average junk bond market appreciation

ceo duality as a double edged sword how boards of directors balance entrenchment avoidance and unity of command when a firm s chief executive officer is also the chairperson of its board directors have opposing objectives according to organization theory such ceo duality establishes strong unambiguous le

regional tax coordination and foreign direct investment this paper analyses the effects of a regionally coordinated profit tax or location subsidy in a model with three active countries one of which is not part of the union and a globally mobile firm we show that regional coordination can lead to two types of welfare gain first for investments that would take place in the union in the absence of coordination a coordinated tax increase can transfer location rents from the firm to the union second by internalising all of the union s benefits from foreign direct investment a coordinated tax reduction can attract more welfare enhancing investment than when member states act in isolation depending on which motive dominates tax levels may thus rise or fall under regional coordination

a statistical model for wind power forecast error and its application to the estimation of penalties in liberalized markets the problem of accurately forecasting wind energy has garnered a great deal of attention in recent years there are always some errors associated with any forecasting methodology although it is sometimes assumed that the forecast errors are normally distributed it is a special case arising from the geographical dispersion of wind resources as shown in this paper the distribution of the forecast error needs to be examined individually for every wind farm to determine the impact of this error on trading energy in electricity markets this paper addresses the problem of modeling the distribution of the forecast errors associated with persistence forecasts at the level of a single wind farm and develops a novel mixed distribution based model to approximate the distribution of these errors the model is then used to estimate the penalties for imperfectly forecast energy injections in the short term markets the results from the application of this model to trading are further used to assess the feasibility of energy storage in hedging against imperfect forecasts

estimation of the efficiency of structural funds a parametric and nonparametric approach this article seeks to perform an analysis of the efficiency of the application of the structural funds in the regions classified as objective 1 over the period 2000 to 2006 applying the techniques known as data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier in the first place we are going to identify which are the most efficient regions finally we will analyse the extent to which certain factors have repercussions on the efficiency such as country geographical location and contribution of agriculture of gross domestic product gdp and the result indicates that some of these variables have significantly influences of technical efficiency

evaluation of deadweight spending in regional enterprise financing tokila a and haapanen m evaluation of deadweight spending in regional enterprise financing regional studies the problem of deadweight spending has been previously studied using diverse methods however regional variations in deadweight spending have not yet been considered an evaluation of regional business subsidies in finland during 2000 2003 is conducted the analysis reveals regional differences in deadweight spending in proportional and particularly in monetary terms deadweight spending is dependent on many firm project and regional level factors which also largely account for regional differences however there seems to be some regional variation in deadweight spending that originates from differences in the subsidy processes among regions tokila a et haapanen m evaluer les investissements non productifs dans l aide regionale a la creation d entreprise regional studies dans le passe la question des investissements non productifs a ete etudiee a partir de diverses methodes cepend

public capital and total factor productivity new evidence from the italian regions 1970 98 destefanis s and sena v 2005 public capital and total factor productivity new evidence from the italian regions 1970 98 regional studies 39 603 618 this paper analyses the relationship between industrial total factor productivity and public capital across the 20 italian administrative regions it adds upon the existing literature in a number of ways it analyses a longer period 1970 98 it allows for the role of human capital accumulation it tests for the existence of a long run relationship between total factor productivity and public capital through previously suggested panel techniques and for weak exogeneity of public capital and it assesses the significance of public capital within a non parametric set up based on the free disposal hull the results confirm that public capital has a significant impact on the evolution of total factor productivity particularly in the southern regions this impact is mainly ascribed to the core infrastructures road and airports harbours railroads w

inequality and convergence in europe s regions reconsidering european regional policies europe s regions income disparities and regional policies in this paper we take a critical look at current european regional policies first we document the motivation for such policies that is the large income disparities across the regions of the eu15 large disparities are certainly present second we illustrate the various instruments adopted and discuss their underpinnings in established economic theories next we look at available data searching for three kinds of evidence 1 if disparities are either growing or decreasing we conclude they are neither 2 which are the major factors explaining such disparities and in particular if they are the factors predicted by the economic models adopted by the commission to justify current policies we conclude this is most certainly not the case 3 if there are clear signs that eu policies as opposed to other social and economic factors are actually reducing such disparities we cannot find any clear sign of such desired impact our conclusion is that regional and structural policies serve mostly a redistributional purpose motivated by the nature of the political equilibria upon which the european union is built they have little relationship with fostering economic growth this casts a serious doubt on their social value and furthermore strongly questions extending such policies to future members of the european union a successful eu enlargement in our view calls for an immediate and drastic revision of regional economic policies michele boldrin and fabio canova

trading wind generation from short term probabilistic forecasts of wind power due to the fluctuating nature of the wind resource a wind power producer participating in a liberalized electricity market is subject to penalties related to regulation costs accurate forecasts of wind generation are therefore paramount for reducing such penalties and thus maximizing revenue despite the fact that increasing accuracy in spot forecasts may reduce penalties this paper shows that if such forecasts are accompanied with information on their uncertainty i e in the form of predictive distributions then this can be the basis for defining advanced strategies for market participation such strategies permit to further increase revenues and thus enhance competitiveness of wind generation compared to other forms of dispatchable generation this paper formulates a general methodology for deriving optimal bidding strategies based on probabilistic forecasts of wind generation as well as on modeling of the sensitivity a wind power producer may have to regulation costs the benefits resulting from the application of these strategies are clearly demonstrated on the test case of the participation of a multi mw wind farm in the dutch electricity market over a year

the added value of european union cohesion policy mairate a 2006 the added value of european union cohesion policy regional studies 40 167 177 as part of the wider debate on financing the european union the notion of community added value is being used to justify expenditure on cohesion policy broadly this is defined as the increased value resulting from community action and the extent to which intervention adds value to the interventions of other administrations organizations and institutions the paper provides an assessment of the added value brought about by european union regional policy on the basis of the past experience across member states and regions it discusses different aspects of added value with respect to impacts economic integration policy making and programming institutional developments implementation learning and political awareness it concludes by commenting on the proposed reform of the structural funds added value impact integration programming reform mairate a 2006 the added value of european uni

paying the price the impact of controversial governance practices on managerial reputation this study directly examines the reputational penalties that managers pay when they engage in controversial governance practices that raise questions about managerial self interest these penalties

customer power strategic investment and the failure of leading firms why might firms be regarded as astutely managed at one point yet subsequently lose their positions of industry leadership when faced with technological change we present a model grounded in a study of the world disk drive industry that charts the process through which the demands of a firm s customers shape the allocation of resources in technological innovation a model that links theories of resource dependence and resource allocation we show that established firms led the industry in developing technologies of every sort even radical ones whenever the technologies addressed existing customers needs the same firms failed to develop simpler technologies that initially were only useful in emerging markets because impetus coalesces behind and resources are allocated to programs targeting powerful customers projects targeted at technologies for which no customers yet exist languish for lack of impetus and resources because the rate of technical progress can exceed the performance demanded in a market technologies which initially can only be used in emerging markets later can invade mainstream ones carrying entrant firms to victory over established companies

distributive politics and regional development assessing the territorial distribution of turkey s public investment turkey is often perceived as a country with low bureaucratic capacity and prone to political manipulation and pork barrel this article tests whether this is the case by analysing the extent to which politics rather than equity and efficiency criteria have determined the geographical allocation of public investment across the 81 provinces of turkey between 2005 and 2012 the results show that although the turkish government has indeed channelled public expenditures to reward its core constituencies socioeconomic factors remained the most relevant predictors of investment moreover in contrast to official regional development policy principles we uncover the concentration of public investment in areas with comparatively higher levels of development we interpret this as the state bureaucracy s intentional strategy of focussing on efficiency by concentrating resources on the better off among the most in need

convergence in the trends and cycles of euro zone income multivariate unobserved components structural time series models are fitted to annual post war observations on real income per capita in countries in the euro zone the aim is to establish stylized facts about convergence as it relates both to long run and short run movements a new model in which convergence components are combined with a common trend and similar cycles is proposed the convergence components are formulated as a second order error correction mechanism this ensures that the extracted components change smoothly thereby enabling them to be separated from transitory cycles copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

structural funds and the evaluation of community economic development initiatives in the uk a critical perspective armstrong h and wells p 2006 structural funds and the evaluation of community economic development initiatives in the uk a critical perspective regional studies 40 259 272 since their inception within uk structural funds programmes in the 1990s community economic development ced initiatives have experienced a rapid expansion evaluation methods have struggled to adapt to what was a radically new type of policy this paper charts the rise of ced in the uk s objective 1 and 2 programmes and it examines the main problems posed by ced for structural funds monitoring and evaluation whilst progress in adapting the monitoring and evaluation methods to ced has been good a number of key challenges remain to be faced by the eventual ex post evaluations of the 2000 06 programmes and for the 2007 13 programming period the key challenges are identified and possible ways forward are discussed community economic development structural funds evaluation uk programmes armstrong h et wells p 2006 les

assessment of the cost associated with wind generation prediction errors in a liberalized electricity market in this paper a probabilistic methodology for estimating the energy costs in the market for wind generators associated with wind prediction errors is proposed generators must buy or sell energy production deviations due to prediction errors when they bid in day ahead or hour ahead energy markets the prediction error is modeled through a probability density function that represents the accuracy of the prediction model production hourly energy deviations and their associated trading costs are then calculated three study cases based on real wind power installations in spain are analyzed the three study cases show that the error prediction costs can reach as much as 10 of the total generator energy incomes

swinging for the fences the effects of ceo stock options on company risk taking and performance we unpack the concept of managerial risk taking distinguishing among three of its major elements the size of an outlay the variance of potential outcomes and the likelihood of extreme loss we

regional mobility in the european union regional mobility in the spatial distribution of per capita income in the european union is examined over the period 1977 to 1999 the methodology used to investigate this issue combines a series of measures taken from the literature devoted to the dynamic study of personal income distribution with a non parametric analysis the results show limited mobility in the distribution considered and a decline in mobility over time the empirical evidence presented indicates moreover that mobility patterns vary as a function of regional development levels additionally the analysis carried out investigates the role played in explaining intra distribution mobility by variables such as per capita income population density per capita expenditure in investment market potential and the share in total employment of agriculture advanced services and non market services

is public expenditure productive abstract this paper considers the relationship between aggregate productivity and stock and flow government spending variables the empirical results indicate that i the nonmilitary public capital stock is dramatically more important in determining productivity than is either the flow of nonmilitary or military spending ii military capital bears little relation to productivity and iii a core infrastructure of streets highways airports mass transit sewers water systems etc has most explanatory power for productivity the paper also suggests an important role for the net public capital stock in the productivity slowdown of the last fifteen years

between development and social policies the impact of european structural funds in objective 1 regions rodriguez pose a and fratesi u 2004 between development and social policies the impact of european structural funds in objective 1 regions reg studies 38 97 113 european regional support has grown in parallel with european integration the funds targeted at achieving greater economic and social cohesion and reducing disparities within the european union eu have more than doubled in relative terms since the end of the 1980s making development policies the second most important policy area in the eu the majority of the development funds have been earmarked for objective 1 regions i e regions where gdp per capita is below the 75 threshold of the eu average however the european development policies have come under increasing criticism based on two facts the lack of upward mobility of assisted regions and the absence of regional convergence this paper assesses using cross sectional and panel data analyses the failure so far of european development policies to fulfil their objective of de

evaluating the impact of european union cohesion policy in less developed countries and regions bradley j 2006 evaluating the impact of european union cohesion policy in less developed countries and regions regional studies 40 189 199 the expansion of structural funds since the late 1980s presented european commission and domestic policy makers with design and impact evaluation challenges such policies moved beyond demand side stimulation and were aimed at the promotion of real convergence mainly through productivity enhancing supply side mechanisms research suggests that the macro models are potentially capable of extracting the pure structural funds policy impacts from the background of all the other domestic and external shocks that affect the economy at the same time however such results only provide imprecise ballpark impact estimates and the challenge remains of reconciling bottom up microanalysis with top down macroanalysis macro evaluation macro economic models hermin models ex ante impacts bradley j 2006 evaluer l impact de la politique de cohesion de l ue dans les pays

should i stay or should i go an agent based setup for a trading and monetary union abstract the recent history of the european union eu suggests the importance of studying the conditions under which two or more countries can benefit from becoming part of a union of course this depends both on the economic characteristics of the involved countries and on the scope of the union i e the level of integration of markets regulations and institutional bodies this study tackles the topic from the angle of agent based computational economics by designing an open economy model inspired from the eu where countries can be part of a trade and monetary union we find that for similar countries it is always beneficial to be a member of a union although a lack of mobility frictions can cause a divergence between the two countries weakening the overall union performance even if countries have different productivity the performance of the union is in general better than the performance of the isolated countries the exception is when productivity gap and labor mobility are both high in this case a strong migration within the union can create economic distortions exacerbating the gap between the member states stronger fiscal integration helps reducing inequality between countries increasing the sustainability of the monetary union

industrial output and factor input determination in an econometric model of a small open economy abstract a correct approach to the modelling of the supply structure of the manufacturing sector of a small open economy soe represents the single most important aspect of any economy model to date much of the empirical modelling of output and factor inputs in soes has been ad hoc and a serious source of model instability we comment on how these issues have been treated in regional and soe models we outline a general production function framework for the analysis of capacity output and long run factor demands in a world consisting of soes in the special case where the factors of production of each country are homothetic in world output and weakly separable from the factors in all other countries then the complex general formulation can be decomposed into a series of simpler ones such restrictions are not unrealistic we show how this approach can be implemented in practice empirical results for the irish economy are presented

critical survey the new geographical turn in economics some critical reflections over the past few years a new geographical economics has emerged focused on the spatial agglomeration of industry and the long run convergence of regional incomes several leading names are associated with this geographical turn including paul krugman michael porter robert barro and w brian arthur this new economic geography it is argued here is neither that new nor is it geography instead it is a reworking or re invention using recent developments in formal mathematical mainstream economics of traditional location theory and regional science as such it is quite opposed to and difficult to reconcile with the work on regional development and industrial agglomeration being carried out in economic geography proper

does social capital matter for european regional growth abstract this paper analyzes the role of different elements of social capital in economic growth for a sample of 85 european regions during the period 1995 2008 despite the remarkable progress that social capital and european regional economic growth literatures have experienced over the last two decades initiatives combining the two are few and entirely yet to come for the post 1990s period recent improvements in data availability allow this gap in the literature to be closed since they enable the researcher to consider the traditionally disregarded eastern and central european ece regions this is particularly interesting as they are all transition economies that recently joined the european union with relatively low levels of social capital on the methodological side we follow the bayesian paradigm which enables us to make direct inferences on the parameters to be estimated and deal with parameter uncertainty leading to a deeper understanding of the relationships being investigated in particular we analyze three indicators of social capital namely social trust associational activities and social norms results suggest that the two former might have some implications for regional growth while social norms are a weaker predictor for growth

rolling optimization of wind farm and energy storage system in electricity markets intraday energy markets have been established in some power markets mainly because of large scale wind power integration inspired by the spanish power market this paper proposes a modified market design which contains day ahead and intraday energy bidding sections to better accommodate stochastic wind energy then coordinated operation of the wind farm wf and energy storage system ess is studied rolling stochastic optimization formulations for day ahead intraday biddings and real time operations are put forward to obtain the optimal bidding strategy of wf ess union in each bidding section to maximize its overall profit case studies and sensitivity analyses are carried out on a union of wfs and a pumped storage plant psp simulation results show that the proposed rolling optimization method can effectively utilize the updated wind power forecast data and regulation capability of ess and thus increase profit for the union prominently

quality of life and economic convergence across spanish regions 1980 2001 marchante a j and ortega b 2006 quality of life and economic convergence across spanish regions 1980 2001 regional studies 40 471 483 evaluations of regional welfare conventionally rely on gross value added gva per capita as an indicator of living standards this paper attempts to readdress the regional welfare issue by using alternative composite indicators in the context of the united nations development programme undp human development indices evidence is presented regarding to what extent such alternative measures of living standards are converging with this aim a database for the spanish regions nuts ii was constructed for 1980 2001 and an augmented version of the human development index ahdi was estimated incorporating sub indices of health education and the resources required for a decent standard of living including an indicator of social exclusion the regional convergence of three per capita income measures and the raw data of seven indicators of quality of life were also

centralized fiscal spending by supranational unions we study fiscal spending by supranational unions where participation is voluntary and countries bargain over contributions to and the allocation of a central budget since decisions are made by unanimity bargaining power over the allocation becomes a function of contributions which generically causes inefficiency in the presence of income asymmetry between member nations this link between the budget allocation and contributions explains patterns of inefficient spending in the eu e g why resources are diverted to low productivity projects in high income countries the option of veto creates a trade off between efficiency on the contributions margin and efficiency on the allocation margin

testing for convergence clubs in income per capita a predictive density approach the article proposes a technique based on the predictive density of the data conditional on the parameters of the model to jointly tests for groups of unknown size in a panel and to estimate the parameters of each group the procedure is applied to the problem of identifying convergence clubs in scaled income per capita data the steady state distribution of european regional data clusters around four poles of attraction with different economic features the distribution of income per capita of oecd countries has two poles of attraction and each group clearly identifiable economic characteristics we share the uncommonness of being different j p roche

mass media competition political competition and public policy if better informed voters receive favourable policies then mass media will affect policy because mass media provide most of the information people use in voting this paper models the incentives of the media to deliver news to different groups the increasing returns to scale technology and advertising financing of media firms induce them to provide more news to large groups such as taxpayers and dispersed consumer interests and groups that are valuable to advertisers this news bias alters the tradeoff in political competition and therefore introduces a bias in public policy the paper also discusses the effects of broadcast media replacing newspapers as the main information source about politics the model predicts that this change should raise spending on government programmes used by poor and rural voters

who owns the media the authors examine patterns of media ownership in 97 countries around the world they find that almost universally the largest media firms are controlled by the government or by private families government ownership is more pervasive in broadcasting than in the printed media government ownership is generally associated with less press freedom fewer political and economic rights inferior governance and most conspicuously inferior social outcomes in education and health the adverse effects of government ownership on political and economic freedom are stronger for newspapers than for television the adverse effects of government ownership of the media do not appear to be restricted solely to instances of government monopoly the authors present a range of evidence on the adverse consequences of state ownership of the media state ownership of the media is often argued to be justified on behalf of the social needs of the disadvantaged but if their findings are correct increasing private ownership of the media through privatization or by encouraging the entry of privately owned media can advance a variety of political and economic goals especially those of meeting the social needs of the poor

the dilemma of enlargement for the european union s regional policy or more than three decades the european union and formerly the european community and the european economic community has pursued a regional policy but the biggest challenge in the short history of this policy field is now under way this is the enlargement process of the european union which will include the former communist countries in eastern and central europe into the eu s existing policy framework we show below that integration of these countries into the eu creates a dilemma for the eu s regional policy the eu currently has two distinct regional policies one active and the other reactive in analysing the differences between them it becomes obvious that a shift from active to reactive regional policy is needed for the eastern enlargement otherwise the existing member states will jeopardise the enlargement process by refusing to finance the enormous increase in expenditures that would be required to continue an active regional policy but a shift to the reactive policy changes dramatically the incentives to the accession countries for eu membership and makes them more resistant to accepting fully the existing set of eu policies hence the dilemma continuing an active regional policy makes enlargement unattractive to the existing members switching to the reactive policy makes the eu membership less attractive to the accession countries to understand this dilemma of enlargement one must understand the forces that have driven the development of the eu s regional policy until today since

income and employment disparities across european regions the role of national and spatial factors meliciani v 2006 income and employment disparities across european regions the role of national and spatial factors regional studies 40 75 91 the paper analyses the impact of trends in employment rates on income convergence across european regions looking at the evolution of entire distributions between 1988 and 1996 european regions have been characterized by a very slow process of income convergence across countries and by a lack of income convergence within countries while trends in labour productivity have contributed to income convergence trends in employment rates have had a diverging impact polarization in employment rates also appears to be the result of national factors and of the negative performance of objective 1 regions more than the consequence of the emergence of geographical clusters that go beyond national borders regional convergence unemployment spatial correlation non parametric estimation meliciani v 2006 les ecarts de revenu et d emploi a travers les regions d euro

when a journalist is assassinated do financial markets care the market s reaction to journalist murders using comprehensive data on journalist assassinations around the world we study the effect of journalist killings on stock returns our event study results show an average price drop of 0 46 fol

eu regional policy and tax competition the european union eu provides coordination and financing of trans european transport infrastructures i e roads and railways which link the eu member states and reduce the cost of transport and mobility this raises the question of whether eu involvement in this area is justified by inefficiencies of national infrastructure policies moreover an often expressed concern is that policies enhancing mobility may boost tax competition we analyze these questions using a model where countries compete for the location of profitable firms we show that a coordination of investment in transport cost reducing infrastructures within union countries enhances welfare and mitigates tax competition in contrast with regard to union periphery infrastructure the union has an interest in a coordinated reduction of investment expenditures here the effects on tax competition are ambiguous our results provide a rationale for eu level regional policy that supports the development of intra union infrastructure

valuing the benefits of urban regeneration although there have been many initiatives designed to regenerate relatively run down and deprived parts of major urban areas there have been surprisingly few attempts to value their benefits this

the impact of structural and cohesion funds on eurozone convergence 1990 2010 maynou l saez m kyriacou a and bacaria j the impact of structural and cohesion funds on eurozone convergence 1990 2010 regional studies ever since the launch of the european integration process and in particular in the context of economic and monetary union the european union has endeavoured to facilitate economic convergence across europe by providing funds to its poorer regions and countries the main objective of this paper is to analyse whether the structural and cohesion funds have contributed towards convergence between the eurozone countries during the past two decades 1990 2010 the results of the spatio temporal econometric model specified in this paper illustrate that these funds have positively contributed to the gross domestic product per inhabitant gdppc growth of receiving regions thus allowing them to reach conditional convergence