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The paper analyzes the changes in poverty (both monetary and non-monetary) in the Spanish Autonomous Communities in the period 2008-2021. Through statistical methodologies, it identifies the existence of absolute divergence in poverty and conditional divergence in per capita income and inequality. The research finds statistical significance with poverty, the unemployment rate, minimum income transfers from the Autonomous Communities and the number of pensions per inhabitant. Neither of the educational variables considered were found to be statistically significant.

The objective of this study is to estimate the impact of Covid-19 on business behavior and its spatial effect among companies. Four specifications have been developed to analyze the pandemic’s influence on key variables determining business behavior: liquidity, indebtedness, profitability, and efficiency. This study has focused on the province of Barcelona, Spain, from which a database of failed and non-failed companies has been compiled, both before and after the pandemic. The models have been estimated using the spatial Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR) methodology, and each equation was estimated following a spatial Differences-in-Differences model. The results confirm that the emergence of Covid-19 has had a significant impact on companies’ financial ratios, worsening their positions in terms of liquidity, indebtedness, and efficiency, with the existence of a spatial contagion pattern.

This study analyzes the impact of all-inclusive offerings on a destination’s competitiveness. When the rise in all-inclusive offerings causes a negative externality on complementary services, it creates a market-size effect. This results in an excessive supply of all-inclusive offerings in the market. Imposing different taxes on all-inclusive and non-all-inclusive offerings is more effective than a cap on the supply of all-inclusive offerings. Taxes can implement the optimal allocation. We expect the market-size effect to be harmful to competitiveness in mature destinations.

In this study we aim at estimating the economic return to education with a territorial perspective. Furthermore, we aim at identifying the effect of the family’s social capital, proxied by language of parents, on the economic returns to education. Results show that education provides different returns to individuals that differ by their family backgrounds, with a significant disadvantage on children whose parents speak an indigenous language. We observe that the territory can contribute to these disparities by up to 7%.

In this paper, we examine tax haven clusters considering them as diverse but recognizable examples of about fifty phenomena worldwide rarely studied from an economic geography perspective. Three canonical but diverse examples of tax haven clusters are used for the analysis: Wilmington in Delaware (United States), Ireland (European Union), and Gibraltar (former European Union, now post-Brexit British Overseas Territory). The objects of study are not treated as being almost perfect expressions of the classical, canonical cluster configuration. On the contrary, we focus on the ‘agentic’ impulses of ‘desire’ motivating human action and use ‘pattern recognition’ to identify the features explaining these clusters and the ‘agentic’ actors motivating them. It is concluded that the characteristics of this type of clusters – tax haven clusters – require more recognition of the interactive and often innovative communication networks through which cluster members interact globally, given they exist within a global system akin to an ‘assemblage’. Unlike other types of clusters, we confirm their extreme dependence on the legislation on which they are based as well as their fragility in the face of legislative changes imposed from the outside.

This research estimates local employment multipliers for Mexican cities. To classify tradable and non-tradable sectors, the study employs both the traditional manufacturing/non-manufacturing classification and an alternative classification based on an employment concentration index that includes services. The findings indicate that manufacturing generates significant multipliers, at the upper bound of those estimated in other regions. However, the alternative classification yields much lower, and more reliable, multipliers. Additionally, the study reveals that creative and technological employment sectors produce larger multipliers compared to the average trade/manufacturing sector.

Demographic change and aging are general trends that have led to an increase in the demand for long-term care. The covid-19 pandemic bought this need for care to the forefront of the political agenda. In response, the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and the Basque Government have begun to support innovative public-community initiatives called Local Care Ecosystems. This article describes the design of an evaluation process guided by Theory of Change, which was developed by the pioneering initiative Pasaia Zaintza HerriLab [Pasaia Care Local Laboratory] for the development of a Local Care Ecosystem in the local municipality of Pasaia, Gipuzkoa. The paper provides useful insights for evaluating other public-community care initiatives and contributes to promoting a culture of evaluation within the institutions.

This article analyses the market dynamics of long-term care provision in households. Specifically, it focuses on exploring the rise of three new business actors in the sector, namely brokering agencies, digital platforms and care workers’ cooperatives. Through a qualitative methodology based on semi-structured in-depth interviews and participatory workshops with key informants, the business models of these commercial actors and their impact on working conditions in the sector are analysed, given the contrasting philosophies with which each of them manages the services provided. The document studies the impact of these actors on the care market and on the processes of formalisation and professionalisation of the sector.

This article explores the rise of collaborative housing among older adults in Spain. These initiatives, emerging from social movements, reflect a grassroots model of living that aims to redefine the aging process through collective self-management of this life cycle. Using a qualitative methodology, five cohousing communities in different regions, including rural areas facing demographic challenges, are studied. The article addresses the relationship between the concept of “commons” and feminist theories of social reproduction. These housing arrangements will be examined in terms of their dynamics, demands, limitations, and interactions with both public and private sectors.

This study examines innovation as a shock reaction in the process of regional economic resilience, focusing on a footwear industrial district in southern Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that innovation, a mechanism of adaptability, emerged in the industrial district not only to support economic recovery, but also to mitigate the adverse effects. Firms implemented novel marketing and sales processes, and some also had to change their information and communication systems or organisational structure to support e-commerce. As such, this study highlights the influence of adaptability on economic resistance.