Knowledge triggers regional growth. Evidence suggests that skilled labour force concentrates in islands of innovation, determining an advantage for innovative regions and a challenge for lagging ones. We address the role of knowledge in shaping effective markets for skilled labour. Estimates are...

This paper seeks to identify relationships between human capital and cultural capital, in the context of local labour market productivity. The key constituents of human capital, identified in the literature, are jointly examined in a close-to-reality-model. The main advantage of our model of...

The potential interactions among fiscal policies, investments and economicgrowth are complex and manifold.In this paper, we will perform a systematic comparative analysis of the variouseconomic insights that arecurrently available on these complex relationships, both theoretically (by aselective...

The concentration of people with diverse socio-cultural backgrounds in particular geographic areas may boost the creation of new ideas, knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. In this paper we measure the impact of the size, skills, and diversity of immigration on the...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has become an established approach for analyzing and comparing efficiency results of corporate organizations or economic agents. It has also found wide application in comparative studies on airport efficiency. The standard DEA approach to comparative airport...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has become an established tool in comparative analyses of efficiency strategies in both the public and the private sector. The aim of this paper is to present and apply a newly developed, adjusted DEA model – emerging from a blend of a Distance Friction...

Standard Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is characterized by uniform proportional input reduction or output augmentation in calculating improvement projections. This paper develops a new Euclidean Distance Minimization model in the context of DEA in order to derive a more appropriate...

With tightening budgets and increasingly critical reviews of public expenditure, there is a need for a careful analysis of the performance of public bodies in terms of an efficient execution of their tasks. These questions show up everywhere in the public domain, for instance, in the provision...

This paper aims to provide a new methodological and empirical contribution to the rising literature on the relative performance and benchmarking of large cities in a competitive world. On the basis of a recent detailed database on many achievement criteria of 35 major cities in the world, it...

This paper aims to provide a conceptual and operational context for analysing regional inequalities. It does so by utilizing a 'search & matching' framework. The model, developed in this paper, maps the way in which individuals are distributed according to: 1) the abilities of individuals to...