Industrial clusters, which are commonly targeted to receive financial support allocated to locally based development projects, are seen as an effective industrial policy tool for improving productivity and generating employment. Nevertheless, identifying clusters and assessing their economic...

This paper examines the relationship between economic growth and the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector for a panel of 503 Brazilian micro-regions for the period 1980-2004 using panel spatial econometrics. It investigates the importance of the SME sector size measured by the share of the...

In Brazil, the regional development policy is directed by the regional development funds for the Northeast (FNE), the North (FNO), and the Central-West (FCO), which invested more than ?36 billion in lagging regions between 2004 and 2010. This policy seeks to facilitate the economic and social...

The choice of the spatial scale of analysis is a problematic issue in applied research, particularly in the literature of regional economic growth. Nevertheless, it is evident that regional scientists have been slow at demonstrating the empirical implications of changes in spatial scale of...