An attempt is made to establish the relation between risk-health factors (encapsulated in terms of obesity) and regional convergence, with special reference to the US states. The econometric results indicate that obesity does have an impact on regional growth and convergence. A preliminary...

The principle aims of regional policy can be encapsulated in terms of ‘spatial equity’ and ‘economic efficiency’. Establishing the relation between these two aims is of fundamental importance. Conventionally, however, it is assumed that there is a conflict or a ‘trade-off’ between...

This paper reconsiders the question of regional convergence across the US States over the long-run. The analysis is carried out over the period 1929-2005. Our analysis advocates and implements an Error-Correction-Model (ECM) approach to deal with this issue. The aforementioned model is applied...

Regional convergence has spurred one of the most debatable topics in contemporary research in economics and one of the most critical issues from a policy perspective. In this paper, the intention is to augment the literature on regional convergence in Europe using the agricultural sector as a...

The regional policy problem is often conceived as a trade-off between aggregate efficiency and interregional equity. A policy to allocate investment across regions frequently causes a contradiction in the aims of regional policy, in the sense that it might lead to high rates of aggregate growth...

This paper attempts to rekindle interest on regional allocation of investment and to show that a trade-off between aggregate efficiency and interregional equity is implied. Modifying, however, the objective function it is established that this trade-off can be avoided.

Although the importance of technology adoption has been acknowledged, nevertheless, at a more general level, a critical question arises: how do the overall infrastructure conditions affect the absorptive ability of a regional economy? This question can be stated alternatively as: what are the...

A model of regional convergence is developed in which the pattern of convergence is attributed to the rate of technological adoption across regions. If absorptive abilities vary across regions, convergence is constrained within a certain group of regions that share common structural...

This paper attempts to investigate the relation among wages, unemployment and obesity and to identify public policies to address the problem of over-weightness. To this purpose, a simple search and matching model of labour market is developed. Our framework tries to capture the relationship...

The paper develops a model for the screening mechanism for higher education, within an adverse selection framework. Specifically it examines the effect of wage earned by high school graduates on higher education participation. The model pinpoints a positive relation between the “high school”...