How do peripheral and relatively isolated regions innovate? Recent research has tended to stress the importance of agglomeration economies and geographical proximity as key motors of innovation. According to this research, large core areas have significant advantages with respect to peripheral...

The geographical sources of innovation of firms have been hotly debated. While the traditional view is that physical proximity within city-regions is key for the innovative capacity of firms, the literature on ‘global pipelines’ has been stressing the importance of establishing communication...

The notion of proximity is increasing in popularity in economic and geographic literature, and is now commonly used by scholars in regional science and spatial economics. Few academic works, however, have explored the link between regional development and proximity relations. This comprehensive...

This paper examines the sources of firm product and process innovation in Norway. It uses a purpose-built survey of 1604 firms in the five largest Norwegian city-regions to test, by means of a logit regression analysis, Jensen et al.’s (2007) contention that firm innovation is both the result...

This paper looks at the geographical dimension of firm networking in Norway, by examining the impact of manager-level, firm-level and regional-level variables on the decisions of firms to collaborate with partners at different levels of geographical distance. Using data stemming from a survey of...

This paper provides an empirical study of the determinants of income inequality across regions of the EU. Using the European Community Household Panel data-set for 102 regions over the period 1995-2000, it analyses how micro-economic changes in human capital distribution affect income inequality...

The majority of the literature on fiscal decentralization has tended to stress that the greater capacity of decentralized governments to tailor policies to local preferences and to be innovative in the provision of policies and public services, the greater the potential for economic efficiency...

Much of the recent worldwide trend towards devolution has been driven by the belief that fiscal decentralization is likely to have a positive effect on government efficiency and economic growth. It is generally assumed that the transfer of powers and resources to lower tiers of government allows...

This paper investigates the patterns of corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&As) involving firms located in the EU25 as well as in the four EFTA countries between 1998 and 2003. It first uncovers the \'cross-border balance\' of M&As across European states, before identifying, through...

This paper deals with the relationship between decentralisation, regional economic development, and income inequality within regions. Using multiplicative interaction models and regionally aggregated microeconomic data for more than 100,000 individuals in the European Union (EU), it addresses...