As the budgets of the European Union (EU) become tighter, the questions about the effectiveness of EU’s expenditure, especially the most important parts such as Cohesion policy, are hotly debated. The aim of this paper is to examine whether the presence of social attitudes may influence the...

The article deals with the development of disparities in regional per capitaGDP and convergence processes in the enlarged EU. A NUTS2 data for the EU-27 countriesis analysed for the period 1995-2008. Poorer European regions show higher average growthrates such that convergence might be...

The paper assesses on empirical grounds the level and the evolution of regional inequalities in each European Union new member-state (EU NMS) and examines the possibility for the emergence of regional convergence clubs. The experience of the EU NMS is a unique situation, where relatively closed...

New Economic Geography models usually abstract from unemployment. By contrast, wage curve models (Blanchflower and Oswald, 1994) imply a negative correlation between regional unemployment and wages, but fail to account for agglomeration effects. Relying upon some stylised facts concerning the...

A model of optimal allocation of investment across regions is developed. It is shown that the optimality conditions may lead to increasing inequalities at the spatial level. Introducing an element of endogenous innovation dualistic situation emerges. An empirical analysis, using data for the...

This work aims at identifying the determinants of health spending differentials among Italian regions and at highlighting potential margins for savings. The analysis exploits a data set for the 21 Italian regions and autonomous provinces starting in the early 1990s and ending in 2006. After...