Industrial sites cause several negative externalities, such as traffic noise disturbance, congestion, and obstruction of view. In order to quantify the negative effects stemming from industrial sites, we estimate – using a hedonic pricing model – the impact of distance to industrial sites on...

This paper addresses the question to what extent the performance of industrial sites is affected by their local economic structure and accessibility. For this aim, we test for the existence of statistically significant relationships between agglomeration externalities (specialization, diversity,...

The intensity of international transactions remains lower than could be potentially justified on the basis of transportation costs alone. This has become known as the ?mystery of the missing trade?. Transaction costs may be responsible for ?under-trading? across national borders. More...

Structural funds are the most intensively used policy instrument by the European Union to promote economic growth in its member states and to speed up the process of convergence. This paper empirically explores the effectiveness of European Structural Funds by means of a panel data analysis for...

The empirical economic growth literature is criticized for its lack of robustness. For different definitions of robustness, conclusions vary from ?almost every correlation is fragile? to ?a substantial number of explanatory variables are robust.? We re-analyze the empirical results of the...

In recent years, a large number of studies investigated the spatial distribution of economic activities in Western Europe by means of various measures of geographical concentration. The fundamental problem with the indices currently used in the literature is that they do not take explicitly into...

Large shocks, such as natural disasters, are often found to have little or no effect on the equilibrium distribution of economic activity across space. Two apparently competing theoretical explanations for this phenomenon are the increasing returns theory and the locational fundamentals theory....

Structural funds are the most intensively used policy instrument by the EuropeanUnion to promote economic growth in its member states and to speed up the process ofconvergence. This paper empirically explores the effectiveness of European Structural Fundsby means of a panel data analysis for 13...

As part of the Kyoto Protocol, many countries have committed themselves tosubstantially reduce the emission of greenhouse gases within a politically imposed timeconstraint. Investment subsidies can be an important instrument to stimulate the adoption ofenergy-saving technologies to achieve...

Meta-analysis is a research method to synthesise previously obtained researchresults. It is best seen as a statistical approach towards reviewing and summarising theliterature. This paper aims to introduce and critically review the research method ofmeta-analysis and to illustrate its potential...