By applying the smile curve concept to regional value added growth rather than to levels, the paper claims that local value-added growth increases when a region is specialised in scarce natural resources or scarce human skills within a GVC. Under these circumstances, in fact, the region can...

By studying the interaction between social capital and decentralization, we show that political decentralization can be a source of divergence across heterogeneous regions. In particular, we claim that since the local endowments of social capital display their effect on the economy mainly...

We investigate the relationship between diversity and productivity in Europe using an original dataset covering the NUTS 3 regions of 12 countries of the EU15 (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, former Western Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United...