The paper bases itself on recent theoretical writings in growth economics that empha-size the effects of both own R&D efforts and of interregional technology spillovers on regions´ productivity. We propose robust estimation techniques to evaluate the R&D spillovers across West German functional...

Main topics of the following analysis are the development of spatial structure and the question whether the economic disparities between agglomerations and peripheral areas will con- or diverge. Frequently, economic disparities are measured by per capita i ncome. Because of the relationship...

Die vorliegende Studie beschäftigt sich mit Wachstumsabhängigkeiten zwischen räumlich benachbarten Gebieten in Westdeutschland im Zeitraum von 1976 bis 1996. Die Hypothese für derartige Wachstumsabhängigkeiten leitet sich aus der räumlichen Dimension von Mechanismen ab, denen ein...

With this paper we seek to contribute to the literature on the relation between finance and growth. We argue that most studies in the field fail to measure the quality of financial intermediation but rather resort to using proxies on the size of financial systems. Moreover, cross-country...

The UN Millennium Development Goals have recognized poverty reduction as the main goal of global development policy. A comprehensive framework to evaluate the effectiveness of single policy measures and policy packages with respect to poverty reduction is still lacking, though. Policy evaluation...

Nonfarm activities generate on average about 60 percent of rural households? incomes in the eastern Himalayan region of India. This paper analyzes the determinants of participation in nonfarm activities and of nonfarm incomes across rural households. We present and explore an analytical...

Modern (endogenous) growth theory tells us that knowledge spillovers are crucial for the growth of high-income economies. Against this background the paper provides a survey of theoretical and empirical findings highlighting the question of how geographically limited knowledge diffusion can help...

According to New Growth Theory one can not rely on the convergence mechanisms inherent in traditional neoclassical constant returns to scale models. Convergence as well as divergence is possible, in general, depending on the assumptions about technology, factor mobility and ease of knowledge...

Economic disparities between the regions of the European Union are of constant concern both for policy and economic research. In this paper we examine whether there are overlapping trends of regional development in the EU: overall convergence on the one hand and persistent or even increasing...

A new approach in German innovation policy organizes contests of proposals for developing innovation networks. Based on an overview of the different programs, we investigate the advantages, problems and limitations of such an approach. We find that this type of policy may have a relatively large...