Human capital is observed to be an important contributor to growth but unevenly distributed geographically. While there is consensus on the importance of human capital to economic development, debate takes shape around two central issues. First, there is the question of how best to measure human...

Multinational firms (MNFs) have been shown to have a set of defining characteristics. Compared to domestic firms, they have a larger fraction of skilled workers, higher R&D to sales ratios and established networks to knowledge sources in several different countries. As illustrated by the...

Lönespridningen bland OECD-länderna har ökat kontinuerligt under de senaste decennierna. Som förklaring anges bland annat ökad globalisering och handel, förändringar i den relativa efterfrågan och utbudet av arbetskraft samt institutionella förändringar, såsom fackföreningarnas roll...

Do the social and cultural environments have any impact on regional development, expressed in terms of e.g. entrepreneurship, innovations and growth of new industries? A rapidly increasing field of research has found many indications on that such an impact of the civil society exists. In the...

Accessibility to knowledge and local service markets can be assumed to explain regional growth performance. The role of regional supply of services and educated labour with respect to regional development are stressed by many researchers. In this paper we make an empirical analysis using panel...

This chapter intends to demonstrate that the Stockholm region is the key centre for knowledge development, innovations and intellectual creativity in Sweden. The region is an attractor for individuals with ambitions and talents in political, economic and cultural life. At the same time novel...

The main purpose of the study in this paper is to establish to what extent accessibility to R&D and human capital can explain regional export. This is done by estimating knowledge production functions, with export value and high valued exports in Swedish municipalities from 1997 to 1999 as...

A longstanding research tradition assumes that endogenous technological development increases regional productivity. It has been assumed that measures of regional patenting activity or human capital are an adequate way to capture the endogenous creation of new ideas that result in productivity...

I analyze the effects of sub-city level density of economic activity on worker productivity. Using a geocoded dataset on employment and wages in the city areas of Sweden, the analysis is based on squares representing “neighborhoods” (0.0625 km2), “districts” (1 km2), and...

While there is a general consensus on the importance of human capital to regional development, debate has emerged around two key issues. The first involves the efficacy of educational versus occupational measures (i.e. the creative class) of human capital, while the second revolves around the...