There is a continuous commitment of policy makers in the UK to supporting innovation in small and medium firms. For these policy initiatives to be successful, an understanding of the factors driving innovation activities is required. In this study, we focus on the role that Information and...

A monetary union raises new economic questions about the interpretation and the implications of high current account de?cits for the economic performance of its members in the medium term. Recent literature has argued that conventional measures of external sustainability are misleading because...

This paper sets out to re-examine CO2 emissions for 22 OECD countries over the period 1870–2006. The aim is to help explain mixed evidence regarding convergence in per capita emissions among countries. The paper revolves around two potential sources of inconclusive findings regarding CO2...

The Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek (HOV) model in its strict form has been strongly rejected by the data. Relaxing some assumptions of the standard HOV model is key to find improvements in its performance. We apply Davis and Weinstein (2001) methodology to analyse the validity of the HOV model using...

This paper uses survival analysis to investigate the duration of Spanish firms’ trade relationships by destination over 1997-2006. Whereas firm export status is highly persistent, firms’ destination portfolio is very dynamic: a typical firm-country exporting relationship has a median...

This paper investigates the determinants of a firm’s export decision and focuses on the identification of spillovers from neighbouring firms. We use a panel of Spanish firms that started to export to at least one of 95 countries over the 2000-2006 period. Detailed data on the location of firms...

Local governments have to take decisions in increasingly complex contexts. Among other decisions, in countries where it is permitted by the legal framework, local policymakers have to choose the type of management of local public services. The importance of the urban water service and the...

In this paper we model the long-run relationship between per capita CO2 and per capita income for the Spanish economy over the period 1857-2007. According to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (ECK) the relationship between the two variables has an inverted-U shape. However, previous studies for...

This paper presents a duopoly model of firm rivalry in a vertically differentiated industry when market dynamics is explicitly accounted for. It shows how the interplay between demand (degree of product differentiation, demand elasticity) and cost (fixed and quality costs) factors determine...

The existence of a large border effect is considered as one of the main puzzles of international macroeconomics. We show that the border effect is, to a large extent, an artefact of geographic concentration. In order to do so we combine international flows with intranational flows data...