The purpose of this article is to contribute for the debate about the construction of governance spaces which guarantee the continuity of the regional development public policies, thus articulating actors and optimizing strategic projects in order to improve regional competitiveness ans...

The paper deals with a new approach in German innovation policy that organizes contests of initiatives for public funds. Based on an overview of the different programs we investigate the advantages and problems of such an approach. We find that this type of policy may have a large impact and...

The interpretation and measurement of the innovation performance of territorial units represent well established research areas. Nevertheless the way this issue is usually addressed raises several questions. In present paper we are dealing with two of these problematic fields: the level of...

In Japan, recent low birthrate and aging population have progressively led to a crisis for infrastructure. In particular, the quantity of drainage from homes and factories is remarkably decreasing, along with the decline of economic activity resulting from the overseas move of Japanese...

With the recent global economic and financial crisis, the governments throughout Europe have been closing, concentrating, restructuring or privatizing some public services and, at the same time, the number of services available in electronic platforms (e.g., by Internet or telephone) has been...

This paper evaluates the net benefits of the implementation of the broadband infrastructure deployment targets by 2020 as entailed by the Digital Agenda for Europe Initiative set forth by the European Commission. We estimate the returns from broadband infrastructure for the period 2005-2011,...

Recently, there has been wide interest in the "economics" of population aging. Demographic change has crucial consequences for economic behavior; it e.g. implies that consumption and investment decisions vary over the life-cycle. The latter has important implications for economic growth, whereas...