En el Consejo Europeo de Lisboa (2000) los Jefes de Estado y de Gobierno de la Unión Europea fijaron como objetivo conseguir que la economía europea se convirtiese en la más competitiva y dinámi-ca del mundo para el año 2010. De este modo las actividades de investigación y desarrollo (I+D)...

En los inicios de la ciencia económica los servicios eran considerados como actividades económicamente improductivas. Obviamente esta errónea convicción fue desterrada a lo largo del desarrollo del conocimiento científico de la economía. No obstante, la influencia de estas primeras...

The use of advanced business services has become an essential element for competitiveness in modern economies in which traditional competitive advantages based on prices, lower labour costs or the abundance of natural resources are being replaced by new advantages based on higher quality,...

The search for the maximum use of scale and agglomeration economies and the need to operate firms in the most flexible way have provided a strong impulse for companies to increase their use of external intermediate services. Because of their strategic role, the use of business services that are...

The relationship between city size and territorial productivity hasattracted much attention in the urban economic literature. Some theories on thefield claim for a strong positive correlation between the size of the municipalitiesand their income, mainly motivated by economical reasons,...

Even though there is a general consensus in the regional economics literature about the relevance of agglomeration economies in the distribution of economic activity, analyses of regional differences in employability in Spain have found limited empirical evidence about the role played by...

A relatively frequent problem when cross-classified data is needed (for example region <InlineEquation ID="IEq1"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$$\times $$</EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"> <math xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <mo>×</mo> </math> </EquationSource> </InlineEquation> industry) is that only aggregate (not cross-classified) data exists. Filling the gaps by combining data from diverse sources usually requires data conciliation. Ecological inference and...</equationsource></equationsource></inlineequation>

Most of the regional empirical analyses are limited by the lack of data. Researches have to use information which is structured in administrative or political regions not always economically meaningful. Any aggregation of a territory in regions with economic sense requires data of the main...

We carry out an analysis of the determinants of location for business services within a region, as opposed to the more usual comparisons among nations or regions. The expected higher concentration patterns at this level can be further biased when one or more urban centers have a disproportionate...

In this paper, we put forth the view that the potential for urbanisation economies increases with interaction opportunities. On the basis of that premise, three properties are key to an agglomeration index, which should: (i) increase with the concentration of population and conform to the...