Otoño 2002

As a departing point, the paper presents the historical genesis of the
concept of industrial district focusing on the scientific views of the pioneer of this field, Alfred Marshall. The concept has its origins in the observation of the current industrial
reality, mainly of the British one. The purpose is to give an explanation to the
difficulties of the classic theory and to study the challenges of the class conflicts.
The economic conditions which launched British industrial districts were present,
grosso modo, in Italy after the second World War. Some contributions have dealt with
the little industrialisation of some Italian regions and using Marshallian thoughts
have rediscovered the industrial districts phenomenon. This is the starting point of a
high number of scientific contribution in Italy and abroad. Some of these international
studies, particularly the ones made by Spanish experts, are quoted. The text analyses
the link between districts-made in Italy with the competitive advantages of Italian
products in many economic activities (i.e. clothing, shoes, furniture, etc.). Finally, in
the third part the paper reviews some new contributions on the industrial district in
Italy.

In this article we analyse the evolution of productivity in economic activities
related with tourism during the period 1965-1995, as well as their effect on
market services in the Spanish regions. The used methodology includes a variety of
tools, like data envelopment analysis, indexes of Malmquist, and the breakdown of
total efficiency in intrasectorial and composition efficiency.
The results show that composition efficiency in market services sector has improved
during the studied period, as consequence of growth in the relative size of those branches more efficient or of those where efficiency has grown more. The good behaviour
of compared efficiency in the Hostelry and restaurants branch explains that the regional
specialization in this branch has become an element for improving composition
efficiency.
The productive change has been positive in the whole period analysed except in the
years 1979 and 1995, with an average yearly variation of 3,1% explained, almost
completely, by technical change. The regions that have experienced the biggest (positive)
productive changes have been Cataluña, Galicia, Extremadura, Valencia and
Madrid.

The present paper has as objective to study the whole relative problem to the autonomous communities and regional heath care expenditure financing in Spain. This article has a dual purpose. First, the financing of the current health care attendance is approached in the Spanish regions passing magazine to its possible variants and we observe that the balance of our system is clearly inclined towards the side of the integration in the general pattern of financing («Fiscal Room») with specific conditions («Mixed System»). Secondly, we examine the new situation in the mark of health care and its corresponding financing in the new model approved in 2001, in terms of the effects of tax assignment on autonomous communities.

The goal of this paper is helping in the diffusion in our country of the techniques given by Spatial Econometrics, offering an overview of its theoretical and applied aspects. Specifically, we introduce the two types of spatial data analysis: the exploratory analysis, focused on a univariate study, as well as the study of spatial autocorrelation in a regression model. Additionally, we apply some of the techniques to the case of the European Union regions.

Different recent works have shown that Spanish economic research has increased its international presence during the nineties. These works have also found that there is a duality in the diffusion of the research through national or international journals in function of the considered research area. In this paper, we analyse if the evolution of Spanish regional and urban research have followed the same trend as research in general economics. It also analyses if there are clear differences between works published by international journals and by national journals between 1991 and 2000. The obtained results show that regional and urban research has followed a similar trend (even more intense) to the one observed general economics research.

Since the late 80’s, Barcelona has become an international metropolis where the international competitiveness of the Spanish economy has mainly been concentrated. Until now, the ways of understanding the reasons why Barcelona’s economic performance has achieved such a remarkable situation are taken principally from an urban perspective. Different research programs have underlined the existence of specifically territorial competitiveness elements: closeness to European markets, broadening of the metropolitan area, and the existence of territorial-based external economies as localization, urbanization and network economies. This research points out another feature in Barcelona’s new economic model that is also common to other of the most developed cities and economies of the world; changing their production foundations towards a fundamental issue: the boost for knowledge- based economy. The aim is to find out how far the changes detected in the ways of production and in the location of the economic activity are linked with the growing of high-densely knowledge-based activities; and whether the international success of the Barcelona’s model could be partly explained by the growing up of higher technology and high-densely knowledge-based activities.

Through this paper we try to discuss the current situation of the research
programme in Spatial Econometrics. This discipline has grown very fast during
the last decades, in quantity as well as in quality, developing a wide variety of techniques.
The results seem satisfactory although there remain some inconsistencies in the
way of doing Econometrics on the Spatial dimension that merit greater attention.
Some of them are discussed in the paper, while others are just highlighted.