<br>There is no abstract for this paper.

Social capital has remained relatively underexplored in innovation literature due to the lack of consensus on the most suitable operationalisation for the analysis of innovative dynamics. This paper aims to fill this gap by looking at social capital as propensity towards civicness and prosocial...

This paper examines whether differences in welfare regimes shape the incentives to work and get educated. Using microeconomic data for more than 100 000 European individuals, we show that welfare regimes make a difference for wages and education. First, people-based and household-based effects...

<br>There is no abstract for this paper.

Much of the recent worldwide trend towards devolution has been driven by the belief that fiscal decentralisation is likely to have a positive effect on government efficiency and economic growth. It is generally assumed that the transfer of powers and resources to lower tiers of government allows...

In this paper we challenge the ability of the conventional methods initiated by Barro and Sala-i-Martin in the early 1990s to detect actual convergence or divergence trends across countries or regions and suggest an alternative dynamic framework of analysis, which allows for a better...

Small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) are increasingly regarded as engines of innovative activity, especially in some of the most dynamic local areas in Western Europe. However, most SMEs lack the adequate resources to conduct research and development (R & D), which is traditionally considered as...

In this paper we present an examination of the possible correlation between rising income inequalities at the regional level and widespread devolutionary initiatives worldwide. When the responsibility and resource-based facets of decentralisation are taken together a marked congruency is evident...

The recent devolutionary trend across the world has been in part fuelled by claims of a supposed 'economic dividend' associated with the decentralization of authority and resources. The capacity of devolved administrations with greater autonomous powers to tailor policies to local preferences,...