The Bothnian Arc is a cross-border area on the border of Finland and Sweden that covers the most populated areas along the upper Bothnian Bay, spanning 800 kilometres. It has a population of around 710 000, across 55 000 km² with an economic output of USD 31 billion. The Bothnian Arc...

This paper seeks to examine the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth at a regional level in Spanish and Portuguese NUTS II. Our panel model is based on the idea by Audrestsch et al (2006), Koo and Kim (2009), and other authors, about the importance of adding economically...

Main trends of per capita income convergence in Portugal and the European Union are surveyed. An explanation is given to the fact that in the last two decades countries have converged, while no visible convergence has taken place among the regions belonging to a given country. A theoretical...

This paper explores the changes in the auto parts sector from the industrial policy perspective of Romania, in the context of globalization. We propose to find the place of the means of transport industry in the processing industry sector and we studied the document of Industrial Policy for...

This paper assesses the effectiveness of vertical industrial policies within the European Union. Vertical industrial policy is defined as government support of specific firms or industries ("picking winners" or "supporting losers"). It is measured as state aid granted by Member States to the...

Spillovers from national industrial policies can cause helpful or harmful competition among policy makers and helpful or harmful interactions among the targeted industries. As a result, it is not in general possible to say whether industrial policy coordination is good or bad. However, reaching...

In this short essay the contributions discussed at the Conference “From the crisis to the growth. Policies to sustain the SM firms”, taken place in June 2009 at the University of Padova, have been collected. In the contributions presented, moving from different points of view, the authors...

Structural funds are one of the regional policy instruments that are most intensively used in the promotion of regional convergence in between the member states of the European Union. There remains, however, many empirical and theoretical divergences in the literature as to their effectiveness...