The paper evaluates the impact the EU Eastern enlargement in 2004 had for the economic performance of NUTS2 region located at the border to the new member states. Effects are identified by applying a synthetic control method. It compares the economic performance of these regions with synthetic...

Over the past 20 years, the innovation system approach has significantly enhanced our understanding of the innovation process, stressing its non-linear, systemic, interactive and evolutionary character. The notion of regional innovation systems (RISs) highlights the regional dimension of new...

Tourism comprises a self- contained phenomenon synonymous to consumption and spare time and its growth, due to the development of technology and the improvement of the standards of living, has taken global dimensions. As a result tourism has developed to a pure industry, leading the economy and...

We aim to understand the impact of nation-wide structural policies such as product market regulation and employment protection legislation and that of macroeconomic factors such as trade exposure, inflation and the level of government debt on the economic growth of regions in the OECD. In...

The paper emphasizes the role of social capital in some particular rural clusters like the French "Poles d'Excellence Rurale" (PER) and the U.S. Rural Knowledge Clusters (RKC). The recent revival of the literature on social capital considers this resource as highly valuable when considering the...

Europe as we know it, the European Union of 27 countries, has evolved from the European Coal and Steel Union of a few developed countries in a comprehensive economic and political union, which now embraces and unites most of the European continent (EU 2011). Each successive transformation and...

This paper begins with a conceptual approach to the third sector, followed by a review of the relationship between investment and growth. The empirical component focuses on Portuguese NUT III Douro and Alto Trás-os-Montes regions, which are said to be less developed, and have been the...

The paper evaluates the impact of the EU Eastern enlargement 2004 on the economic performance of border regions located at the frontier to the new member states in the East. These regions were assumed to be particularly affected by the enlargement because of their geographic proximity to the new...

There has been vast interest in the distribution of city sizes in an economy, but this research has largely neglected that cities also diff er along another fundamental dimension: age. Using novel data on the foundation dates of almost 8,000 American cities, we fi nd that older cities in the US...

To raise the issue of the complex development of a zone where the agricultural production is the prevailing economic activity implies a certain difficulty, induced by the natural question: how can pluri-activity be generated in a predominantly mono-active rural area? Even if, at first sight, the...