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...

Gegenstand zahlreicher regionalökonomischer Untersuchungen ist die Spezialisierung von Regionen auf eine oder wenige Branchen und die gemeinsame Standortwahl von Unternehmen, also regionale Konzentration. Bevor jedoch die Gründe für die Verteilung ökonomischer Aktivität im Raum erforscht...

The spatial patterns of changes in economic diversion and convergence have become more blurred in the last decades. International disparities between nations have diminished. At the same time intra-national disparities have increased in most European countries. In the search to identify the...

This study examines intra-regional disparity and municipal merger in Fukuoka Prefecture. Fukuoka Prefecture (Fukuoka-ken) is a prefecture of Japan located on Kyushu Island. It faces the sea on three sides, bordering on Saga, Oita, and Kumamoto prefectures and facing Yamaguchi Prefecture across...

The influence of general economic and fiscal policy is in recent years more significant than ever. Tight budgets sets limits on public spending in general and on regional development in particular, both with regard to programs specifically targeted on regional issue, but often also indirect due...

A key aspect of understanding how regions grow is the interplay between jobs in the tradable and jobs in the non-tradable sector. Jobs in the tradable sector supply the world market and can therefore move from region to region, but every region has a local demand for non-tradable goods and the...

The paper considers the influence of federal government expenditures and transfers on interregional convergence in gross regional product (GRP) per capita and wages in Russia over 2005?2011. Such an influence is not found. The federal government's policy was reactive and was not focused on...

In this article, we quantitatively analyze changes in the size distribution of municipal jurisdictions in Japan by using their rank-size distribution to capture the change. In Japan, the central government sometimes enacts large-scale municipal mergers, aimed at the creating of municipalities of...

I show that the nontradable sector of a regional economy benefits from attracting jobs in the tradable sector. I find that on average one new job in a tradable industry in a city will attract 1.02 extra jobs in the nontradable sector of that same city. This local multiplier effect increases with...

Over the last decade or so, the debate on the planning and development of the Paris (Île-de-France) region has revolved around two little words: "Grand Paris", or Greater Paris. Despite existing political and scientific controversies surrounding the future of the capital region, three major...