Empirical work on regional growth under spatial spillovers uses two workhorse models: the spatial Solow model and Verdoorn's model. This paper contrasts these two views on regional growth processes and demonstrates that in a spatial setting the speed of convergence is heterogenous in both...

We use Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to evaluate the robustness of determinants of economic growth in a new dataset of 255 European regions in the 1995-2005 period. We use three different specifications based on (1) the cross-section of regions, (2) the cross-section of regions with country...

An analysis of the effects of natural hazards on society does not solely depend on a region's topographic or climatic exposure to natural processes, but the region's institutional resilience to natural processes that ultimately determines whether natural processes result in a natural hazard or...

Economists expect positive returns to investments in infrastructure. However a project with higher national returns might have less favourable effects on a regional level than the alternative. Therefore new infrastructure should also be assessed on a regional level, but econom(etr)ic evaluation...

We suggest a new class of cross-sectional space-time models based on local AR models and nearest neighbors using distances between observations. For the estimation we use a tightness prior for prediction of regional GDP forecasts. We extend the model to the model with exogenous variable model...

This paper investigates the relative impact of microeconomic agglomeration mechanisms on plant's total factor productivity (TFP) using German establishment and employment level data. Contrasting different strategies to estimate TFP from plant level production functions reveals that not...

In this paper we put forward a Bayesian Model Averaging method dealing with model uncertainty in the presence of potential spatial autocorrelation. The method uses spatial filtering in order to account for different types of spatial links. We contribute to existing methods that handle spatial...

This paper suggests that one should account for the endogeneity of important explanatory variables and the persistence of technology shocks when analyzing spatial convergence among regions.Specifically, it is argued that a systems approach is called for that includes the average growth rate and...

Econometric analysis of convergence processes across countries or regions usually refers to a transition period between an arbitrary chosen starting year and a fictitious steady state. Panel unit root tests and panel cointegration techniques have proved to belong to powerful econometric tools if...

We address the effects of wages on employment growth on the basis of a theoretical model from which cost and demand effects can be derived. In the empirical analysis we take a highly disaggregated perspective and apply a newly developed shift-share regression technique on an exhaustive and very...