Imagine a region suffering from a widening income gap that becomes eligible for a generous transfer programme (the treatment). Imagine difference-in-differences analysis (DD) - a before-and-after comparison of the income-level difference - shows that the handicap has risen. Most observers would...

Defense activities exercised in a specific region may alter the region's economic performances. An accurate assessment of the potential economic impacts of defense activities within a specific area is therefore a valuable undertaking, especially for regional planners who may want to prepare for...

This paper looks at whether immigration can mitigate the Dutch disease effects associated with booms in natural resource sectors. We first derive predicted changes in the size of the non-tradable sector from a small general-equilibrium model à la Obstfeld-Rogoff, supplemented by a resource...

In economic geography all indicators and studies are based in one way or another on a measure of distances between two points of interest. The present study discusses the problems that arise in the course of calculating distances between regions. It is shown that measures presently in use are...

Regions differ from each other not only in their economic structure but concerning the impact they have on their neighbors. In the present study interregional spillover activities are analyzed for the regions of the Russian Federation. Instead of knowledge spillovers, more general growth...

This Working Paper analyses the economic importance of the Belgian ports largely based on annual accounts data for the year 2017. As the years prior to 2017 have been described in earlier papers in the same series, the emphasis lies on the figures for 2017 and the developments between 2016 and...

Modern cluster theory provides reasons for positive external effects that accrue from the interaction of spatially proximate firms operating in common and related fields of economic activity. In this paper, we examine the impact of R&D-intensive clusters as a key factor of regional...

The paper provides an ex-post analysis of the determinants of within-country regional heterogeneity of the labour market impact of COVID-19. By focussing on the first wave of the pandemic in the four largest euro area economies, it finds that the propagation of the economic impact across regions...

This paper investigates some crucial aspects of the recent development of industrial districts in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, where this type of spatial agglomeration of industrial firms has flourished since the period immediately after the Second World War. In particular, it is aimed at...

In this paper we use the NEG framework of the Helpman model to investigate the spatial distribution of wages across German labour market regions under different assumptions. As the assumptions of equal regional price level and equal real wages are strongly rejected for the German economy,...