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...

Studies on the productivity spillovers of FDI have concentrated on the national-sectoral level. As a result, little is known about the impact of FDI on absolute and relative regional economic performance. In this paper we examine this issue by relying on a unique dataset of over 20,000 Greek...

At the Lisbon summit of 2000 the European Union (EU) set an agenda for making Europe the most competitive economy in the world. The targets that were set then are unlikely to be achieved. European countries need to concentrate on change in the lower productivity, more labour-intensive service...

We use a new industry-level dataset to quantify the role of ICT in explaining productivity growth in the UK, 1970-2000. The dataset is for 34 industries covering the whole economy (31 in the market sector). Using growth accounting, we find that ICT capital played an increasingly important, and...

The US has experienced a sustained increase in productivity growth since the mid-1990s, particularly in sectors that intensively use information technologies (IT). This has not occurred in Europe. If the US “productivity miracle” is due to a natural advantage of being located in the US then...

Economies at early stages of development are often shaken by abrupt changes in growth rates, whereas in advanced economies growth rates tend to be relatively stable. To explain this pattern, we propose a theory of technological diversification. Production makes use of different input varieties,...

The Long-Term Consequences of Regional Specialization* What are the consequences of resource-based regional specialization, when it persists over a long period of time? While much of the literature argues that specialization is beneficial, recent work suggests it may be costly in the long run,...

Since the early 1990s, there has been a renaissance in the study of regional growth, spurred by new models, methods and data. We survey a range of modelling traditions, and some formal approaches to the ’hard problem’ of regional economics, namely the joint consideration of agglomeration and...

The Long-Term Consequences of Regional Specialization* What are the consequences of resource-based regional specialization, when it persists over a long period of time? While much of the literature argues that specialization is beneficial, recent work suggests it may be costly in the long run,...

The size distribution of cities in many countries follows some broadly regular patterns. Any good theory of city size distributions should (i) be able to account for this regularity, but also (ii) rely on a plausible economic mechanism and (iii) be consistent with other fundamental features of...