Over the past ten years the concept of regional clustering has gained much popularity in business, government, and the academic world. In regional economics, much attention has been devoted to explain the economic success of certain regions all around the world. Theoretical concepts like...

In this paper we study the cultural aspects of the ‘Europe of the regions’. We try to explain value differences in European regions. In explaining value differences between regions we build on Inglehart, who has described and empirically analysed the relationship between cultural values and...

In this paper we develop a model of growth and social capital, and test it using data from the European Value Survey (EVS). Following Putnam’s distinction between bonding and bridging social capital, we model social capital as participation in two types of social networks: first, closed...

We study a cross-section of 54 European regions in the period 1950-1998. The central question is whether social capital, in the form of generalized trust and associational activity, is related to regional differences in economic growth. Based on extensive robustness tests, we present evidence...

This paper presents the results of an empirical study on the relationship between entrepreneurial culture, regional rates of innovation and regional economic growth. Recent literature mainly in regional science and economic geography has emphasized the role of an entrepreneurial culture in...

There is large variation in trade patterns across the world. Despite the popular discussion on the ‘death of distance’, distance is still the most important variable explaining this variation. In explaining trade patterns across the worls, it is important to acknowledge the multiple...

Economists increasingly pay attention to social capital as an important determinant of macroeconomic growth performance. At the same time, there is discussion regarding the robustness of the results of empirical growth studies. In a seminal paper, Knack and Keefer (1997) assess the effect of...

This paper studies the intangible costs of international trade by extending the basic gravity equation with measures of cultural and institutional distance, and institutional quality. Analyzing a sample of bilateral trade flows between 92 countries in 1999, we find that institutional distance...