ALBERT

Description: This article illustrates a case study on the economic impact of autonomy of one of the five Italian special-statute regions, namely Friuli-Venezia Giulia. This region had, and continues to have, legislative, administrative and financial prerogatives in areas of public intervention that are the duty of the central government in the 15 Italian ordinary regions. Accordingly, Friuli-Venezia Giulia could have year by year exploited such prerogatives to achieve an economic development higher than that attainable in the absence of its autonomy. In other words, Friuli-Venezia Giulia long-run economic growth would have been less than that actually experienced if the region had been an ordinary one. To test this hypothesis, the synthetic control method has been adopted. A suitable synthetic Friuli-Venezia Giulia has been constructed to contrast the evolution of regional real per capita GDP, observed over the post-autonomy-policy period, with the corresponding evolution of the same aggregate for the synthetic counterpart. This comparison reveals that if Friuli-Venezia Giulia were not an autonomous region, its per capita GDP would be significantly lower than that effectively observed.

Description: A key function of local governments is to provide a wide array of public services. The supply of these services has been found to create spatial spillovers among neighbouring municipalities. Although it is generally agreed that spillovers are present in models that explain government expenditures, their type—whether endogenous, exogenous or residual—and sign—whether positive or negative—remain ambiguous. In most cases, a subjective process is used to select the type of spatial regression model used in analysis, with mixed results. Per capita expenditures of ten subprogrammes (Security, Housing, Welfare, Environment, Social services, Employment promotion, Health, Education, Culture and Sport) are analysed for all Spanish municipalities with more than 5000 inhabitants in the 2010–2012 period. A Spatial Seemingly Unrelated Regression methodology in a panel framework is used to incorporate correlation between different subprogrammes and spatial dependence. Our results show that the three types of spatial effects are present. Furthermore, substantive dependence is positive in most cases, while negative residual dependence is observed in some.

Description: This paper aims to present and test a methodology capable of determining the impact of urban scenarios and policies through the use of calibrated bid-rents of a spatial interaction model (SIM) as hedonic price estimators of the real estate houses. This approach responds to the increasing requirement of decision support systems to assess complex effects of urban policies because through linking the bid-rents with hedonic prices, it is possible to connect the quantity estimates of the spatial interaction models with the value estimates of the hedonic price approach. The combined methodology is applied to Terceira Island to assess the spatial and economic impact of the decrease in activity of Lajes Military Airfield on employment and on the real estate value of the island. The SIM distributes employment and population by the 31 zones of Terceira Island in the Azores given the distances between zones, the basic employment per zone, the average distances for commuting and shopping and the space available for urban activities. The model’s friction parameters are iteratively calibrated to secure that estimated average commuting and shopping distances are equal to those observed in reality; bid-rents are also calibrated to guarantee that the demand for space in each zone does not overcomes the available sspace for urban activities per zone. The SIM is coded and integrated in MATLAB 2013a. Afterward, a hedonic price regression is estimated to explain house prices in relation to the calibrated bid-rents and house typologies. The effect of the Lajes Military Airfield drawdown is estimated by the SIM, which evaluates the impacts on employment and population, and a hedonic price regression is subsequently performed with the new SIM bid-rents,to appraise the new real estate value. Results show that the Lajes Military Airfield reduction of 750 basic employment will result not only in a decrease of 1552 total employments and 3502 of the 56,437 residents of the island but also in a loss of 55 million € in real estate value. The method has proved its usefulness and effectiveness for predicting the impacts of exogenous shocks in complex urban systems.

Description: The tendency towards urbanisation in the emerging world accompanied by the constant pursuit of higher productivity has prompted many studies which aim to understand agglomeration economies. In the context of Brazil, a country with extremely high regional disparities, exploring this issue is important not only for private stakeholders but also for public policy practitioners. In the framework of static agglomeration effects, we investigate the industrial scope of agglomeration economies in Brazil. On the basis of identified registration data which cover the whole formal labour market in three particular years (2004, 2008 and 2012), we estimate separate models for the logarithm of the hourly individual wage for five broad economic sectors (S1—Manufacturing low-tech; S2—Manufacturing medium-tech; S3—Manufacturing high-tech; S4—Services less-knowledge; and S5—Services high-knowledge). Different estimation strategies are considered in a two-stage model: with and without individual fixed effects in the first stage; and with and without instrumental variables for population density in the second stage. The main results indicate that there is no unique optimal local industrial mix to foster productivity in different technological sectors. Comparing possible theoretical approaches (Marshall–Arrow–Romer, Jacobs, Porter) related to combinations of diversity, specialisation and competition, we find that for S5 only diversity is significant (and positive), suggesting that Jacobs’s perspective is adequate. However, for S1, S2 and S4, the MAR framework seems better able to explain the underlying patterns. In the case of S3, there are elements from both Marshall’s and Jacobs’s perspective. These results seem to be robust to different specifications and estimation strategies. Finally, the urbanisation economies coefficient appears to be positive and significant for all sectors, ranging from 0.0511 to 0.0940 in different specifications, under the simplest estimation (OLS in the first and the second stages). Ordering these effects between the sectors from the highest to the lowest, we find the following sequence: S3, S1, S5, S4 and S2. This can be considered as evidence that high-tech and low-tech manufacturing sectors benefit more from the urban or metropolitan scale in Brazil, followed by services associated with higher knowledge intensity.

Description: This paper looks at the relationship between remittances and higher education in Moldovan regions. The objective is to test whether remittances are associated with an increase in the likelihood of attending higher education institutions by taking into account a possible disruptive effect of migration and looking for regional differences in this relationship. Findings show that, on average, remittances are associated with a 5.4 percentage point increase in the likelihood that young individuals will pursue higher education. Nonetheless, this result is widely heterogeneous across regions.

Description: The present study illustrates an exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) aimed at investigating changes in the distribution of built-up areas in three southern European metropolitan regions (Barcelona, Rome and Athens). An approach based on global Moran’s indexes of spatial autocorrelations was proposed to assess similarities in the spatial organization of the three regions, based on land-use data for 1960 and 2010. Compact monocentric, scattered low-density and mixed polycentric structures were compared in the three regions using local Moran’s indexes computed at two different scales, “urban” (5 km radius) and “regional” (20 km radius). The proposed approach identifies emerging trends in scattered monocentric or polycentric development. Our results outline the trend toward scattered urban expansion for the three cities, with signs of a modest shift toward polycentrism in Barcelona. ESDA provides basic information needed for policies promoting spatially balanced, sustainable development in originally compact and economically segmented regions.

Description: We analyze data on differentiated waste collection (as a proxy of pro-environmental behaviors) in Italian provinces in the years 1999–2012. We make use of a Markov Spatial Transition approach to model the dynamic of local transitions among different levels of environmental pro-sociality, and we find that behaviors, and in particular differentiated waste collecting habits, tend to be strongly influenced by proximity effects, so that provinces with good levels of environmental pro-sociality may positively influence nearby ones, and vice versa for provinces with poor levels of environmental pro-sociality. We also show that in the long term separate clusters with markedly different levels of differentiated waste collection rates emerge.

Description: This study empirically applies the spatial switching regression method to an analysis of regional income club convergence across the 177 economic areas in the contiguous US states over the period from 1969 to 2008. As functionally defined, these economic areas represent the relevant regional markets for labor, products and information. The result of spatial switching regression reveals that the initial gaps between economic areas relative to average global initial per capita income appear to have declined, but the two spatial clubs exhibit a significant difference in their income convergence processes over the period. The estimated coefficient of the convergence parameter for the peripheral spatial regime is negative and highly significant, indicating that a convergence process exists in this spatial regime. However, there is no statistically significant evidence of convergence in the core spatial regime, implying the possibility of different patterns in the growth dynamics of the core spatial regime.

Description: Particularly in declining regions, new businesses creation is seen as a means to secure (future) employment opportunities. However, the way in which new business creation exerts its influence on employment is not evident. Do start-ups in these areas influencing employment change as they do in growth regions? We disentangle the long- and short-term employment effect of new business creation in municipalities in the Netherlands between 1996 and 2010. We conclude that the regional context matters a great deal for the local employment effect of business creation. Further, it is shown in contexts with modest population decline, new businesses are still an important generator of employment opportunities.

Description: This study aims to provide an analysis of the evolution of regional financial inequalities in Turkey over the 1988–2013 period. The theoretical premise of the study is the Keynesian view that the nature and the level of development of the banking system and the geography of financial intermediation are imperative to the understanding of regional economic disparities. Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis tools used in the analysis indicate the presence of a statistically significant non-random spatial pattern at the provincial NUTS 3 level for the 2006–2013 period. LISA cluster maps reveal that the southeastern provinces of the country constitute a hot spot of credit activity in this period. Moreover, the evolution of financial inequality indices suggests that this clustering has led to a reduction in regional financial disparities across the country over the period in question. The results of econometric conditional convergence analysis suggest regional beta-convergence in terms of Gross Value Added per Capita but no statistically significant link between beta-convergence and the reduction in financial disparities.