Milanovic, Lindert and Williamson (2007) were the first to introduce the concept of the “Inequality Possibility Frontier”. Their starting point is that very poor societies will never display high Gini indexes of personal distribution of income because there is very little...

In this paper we describe and analyze an Italian case of urban sprawl and its urban growth for understanding the development of a “metropolitan sprawled system”. The portion of Veneto Region that is part of our case study cover about 3700 square km, for a total of 145...

The city of Essen is located at the centre of the Ruhr area, one of the largest urban and industrial agglomerations in Europe. Like many places in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia Essen had to deal with tremendous structural changes due to the downturn of coal mining and the...

Firms competitive strategy in industrialised countries is increasingly based on activities such as the inventions of new processes and products, the improvements of the employees skill, the creation of a reputation for company’s products. All these actions are intended to increase...

A student of regional development can identify two general types of explanations for why some regions develop as they do. The first explanation relates to the emergence of innovative activities carried out by pioneering entrepreneurs that may transform the society and economy. In literature,...

In 2008/2009, the recent economic crisis affected German engine building industries. The incoming orders dropped dramatically. As some regions especially in western and southern Germany are strongly dependent on such industries, the companies as well as the regions, where the companies are...

We address the post-entry performance of new Portuguese firms by investigating the structural characteristics survival, using both non-parametric methods and semi-parametric methods, for the seven regions of Portugal (NUT II). We also provide a disaggregated analysis by sector and size class,...

The traditional approach to estimate spatial models bases on a preconceived spatial weights matrix to measure spatial interaction among locations. The a priori assumptions used to define this matrix are supposed to be in line with the “true” spatial relationships among the...

The European Union (EU) is often considered (at least in Europe) as a key actor in a globalized world. The aim of this presentation is to check the relevance of this perception which sometimes seems too Eurocentric to be honest. We used methodological tools coming from “Social Network...

Housing and its architectural characteristics physically change in step with changes in culture, social demographics, behavior and environmental structures. These physical changes influence the environment and housing because of contemporary life-styles and behaviors. The cultural identity which...