The recent history of Europe is characterized by a dual picture showing the Old and New countries in sharp contrast with respect to their industrial specialisation and economic performance. We aim at analyzing the intertwined performance of regions and industries in New and Old European...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of various proximity dimensions on the innovative capacity of 276 regions in Europe within a knowledge production function model, where R&D and human capital are included as the main internal inputs. We combine the standard geographical...

There is a large consensus among social researchers on the positive role played by human capital on economic performances. The standard way to measure the human capital endowment is to consider the educational attainments by the resident population, usually the share of people with a university...

The paper aims at analysing the impact of domestic and international tourism on the economic growth process for 179 regions in ten European countries, which are highly representative of total tourism flows. The econometric analysis is carried out for the period 1999-2009 and it is based on a...

The aim of this paper is to assess the role played by creativity and other components of human capital on the process of economic growth for 257 regions in the 27 member countries of the European Union. We first decompose the regional human capital endowment to distinguish between the...

Firms competitive strategy in industrialised countries is increasingly based on activities such as the inventions of new processes and products, the improvements of the employees skill, the creation of a reputation for company’s products. All these actions are intended to increase...

It is widely recognized that most economic activities show a tendency to agglomerate in space and, therefore, economic interactions among firms are likely to be influenced by their geographical proximity. Recently, the literature (Boschma, 2005) has remarked that other dimensions of proximity...

Firms productivity is crucially influenced by knowledge spillovers generated either by other firms located nearby or by direct contacts with consumers or by foreign demand in the case of traded products. In this paper we propose a new channel of efficiency-enhancing knowledge diffusion, which...

In the recent years a vast body of literature has analysed the role of agglomeration economies on industry location and growth. Such literature has, however, paid not too much attention to the wider scenario where such phenomena are rooted, that of an ongoing process of structural change which...

The growing interest on the economic geography issues has provided new vigour to the research efforts aiming at explaining economic phenomena without neglecting space. In particular several studies have focused on the role of spatially bounded externalities on firms agglomeration processes at...