Otoño 2010

The integration of the European economies through the completion of the single or internal market (IM) is one of the most solid pillars of the European policy-making. Nevertheless, near twenty years after the «1992» IM programme, the IM still presents shadows in its performance as well as areas to be completed that had prevented the IM to exploit all its potential for enhancing competitiveness and growth in Europe, in spite of the undeniable micro and macro-economic positive results already achieved. These weaknesses and «missing links», together with the new economic and political context (economic crisis and arrival of the new Commission, which has just launched the new Strategy for European growth «Europe 2020») have moved in 2010 to a process of political relaunching of the IM, called to culminate in 2012, surrounded by a much more complex and less favourable to integration context than the situation prevailing in 1985 when the «1992» programme was launched.

This paper proposes a revised view of regional economic wellbeing. Recent papers on regional studies have expressed concern about the notion of regional well-being that considers only per-capita income indicators. Comparing Italian and Spanish regions and using Data Envelopment Analysis, this paper suggests a synthetic indicator of regional economic wellbeing based on Osberg’s (1985) four components: consumption capacity, accumulation, inequality, and economic insecurity. The indicator does not impose a pre-defined view of well-being in the comparison between regions which may have different perceptions about it. The results show that distinct regions can reach the same level of well-being through different paths. We conclude by reflecting on how future studies of economic well-being should explain the principles underlying the geographical distribution of regional economic well-being.

This paper presents an examination of regional concentration levels of individual industries in the Mexican manufacturing sector and its determinants. The shifts after NAFTA are particularly weighed up. We employ state level data of manufacturing output and employment (1988-2003). The data reveals that industries have become, on average, more dispersed in terms of both production and employment. However among the most concentrated industries are those which are highly linked to international markets. The concentrated, concentrating and largest industries tend to locate in traditional industrial regions, in the north but increasingly more in the Bajio. The regression analysis for the determinants of concentration shows consistency with a number of predictions such as the significance of economies of scale, wages, exports and transport costs, which indicates that international trade plays a role in concentration profiles of industries.

The aim of this paper is to empirically investigate the factors affecting the productivity of firms located in industrial districts. With this purpose, individual firm characteristics and the three classic Marshallian sources of external economies are combined within the framework of a Cobb-Douglas production function which is estimated using a sample of 1.968 manufacturing firms located in 45 industrial districts to be found in the Spanish region of Castilla-La Mancha. The methodology used in the estimation is the multilevel analysis which is especially appropriate for the analysis of hierarchical data structures. The results show that district external economies explain a large amount of the between-districts variation in labour productivity.

The main intention of the present work is to identify the clubs formation of the economic convergence and divergence, which the economic growth has caused in the states of Mexico and the role and importance of the geo-spatial factors on this formation. This study was done by a comparative analysis among economic growth and the convergence hypothesis, based on a spatial cross-regression model. The outcome suggests the existence of differences on the convergencedivergence processes in the Mexican States, pointing out the existence of convergence and divergence centers, which are differentiated by their tendency to their stationary status, keeping their per capita income and development differences on the nation.

In this work we apply the multivariate techniques of Factor Analysis and Cluster Analysis to a wide spectrum of indicators of the physical, demographic, economic and social environment at the municipal level, with the aim of extracting a small number of variables that reflect different aspects latent in the socio-economic reality of the towns of Andalusia. This allows an analysis of the existence of significant socio-economic differences between the municipalities of Andalusia and the subsequent classification of them in relatively homogeneous groups which can serve as a basis for policy development at the municipal level.

One of the main characteristics of societies nowadays is that of experiences of cross-border cooperation. A string of events occurring in recent decades, which are associated with profound changes in today’s society, has favoured the spread and intensification of such cooperation especially active in the European Union venue. In this paper we propose to delve into the European cross-border experience and intend to extract from this some of the consequences and impact mainly related to new ways of thinking and organizing the European territory.

The core of the paper focuses on assessing the new funding system for the autonomous regions in Spain (approved in July 2009) taking into account the problems that derive from the design and the running of the previous system and according to the main principles of a decentralization funding scheme: autonomy and equity. Once the pending problems have been identified, we make an effort to explain the new model through the description and articulation of its basic elements. Likewise, an initial estimation of the resource allocation in the first year of implementation (2009) is also presented as a complement of the previous explanation. From our viewpoint, the new model achieves significant improvements in terms of both principles (autonomy and equity), although some of the weaknesses of the previous model remain unresolved and new problems also arise. As a result, we cannot provide a favourable judgement about the current funding system. Moreover, it must be pointed out that the reform does not fulfil the requirements in terms of transparency and the consolidation of public finance, given that it is the most complex and expensive model (the Central government assumes a significant part of the fall in regional revenues) in the entire Autonomous regions’ trajectory. Finally, it is worth noting the surprising lack of commitment in terms of effective corresponsibility and budgeting consolidation in regional governments, which can be explained an agreement reached in a period of economic crisis that clearly affect the public revenues.