This paper reviews the most important theoretical foundations of the spatial competitiveness conception, dealing with three levels of competitiveness: the country, the region and the tourism destination. Consequently, it draws attention to the main aspects that such concepts of competitiveness...

Entrepreneurship, in general, and rural entrepreneurship, in particular, has become a dynamic field of research in the last two decades. It seems therefore timely to present a quantitative survey of the literature in this area, aimed at identifying the most important sub-topics, contributors and...

This paper studies the relations between micro credit and territory, assuming that micro credit is an important instrument for fighting against poverty and social exclusion. Based on a micro-level database provided by ANDC (Associação Nacional de Direito ao Crédito), we developed a...

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are an essential tool to integrate and manage large amounts of data (statistical and graphical) and to visualise the modelling efforts of the contemporary city. The further use of spatial analysis methods, in particular the exploratory analysis of data and...

Using a framework that articulates the most important factors of competitiveness to evaluate the regional economic strategies, and applying this framework to the Portuguese NUT III Douro, we show that this region is relatively weak in terms of internal linkages, subject to ageing and...

The concept of Regional Innovation System (RIS) builds upon an integrated perspective of innovation, acknowledging the contribution of knowledge production subsystem, regulatory context and enterprises to a region’s innovative performance. Science and Technology parks can act as a platform to...

Although there is a considerable amount of empirical evidence on inter-firm collaborations within technology-based industries, there are only a few works concerned with R&D cooperation by low-tech firms, especially SMEs. Providing further and new evidence based on a recently built database of...