Otoño 2014

With the increasing role of creativity in economic growth, researchers have gained great interest in the study of the creative economy and placed it as an important topic in their research and political agendas. Given the increasing importance attributed by researchers and policymakers to the concept of creativity and creative economy, the increasing interest of researchers in defining and estimating indexes of creativity is no surprise. These indexes provide analytical tools to assess the economic impact of the creative economy and are useful to measure the effectiveness of political decisions. In this paper we compare twelve selected indexes of creativity and we identify their strengths and weaknesses. Then, based on the evaluated indexes of creativity, we propose a new one. Estimating the proposed index of creativity, we compare our results with Florida’s global creativity index (Florida et al., 2011).

The I-district effect establishes the existence of dynamic efficiency in Marshallian industrial districts in the form of a positive innovative differential comparing to the average of the economy. The hypothesis has been empirically validated for the case of technological innovation using patent indicators. Empirical research has assumed that all types of patentable figures (models of innovation, national patents, EPO, WIPO) have the same weight regardless of its actual or expected market value, which may be questionable given the differences in coverage, protection and cost of each figure. In this article we question the existence of the I-district effect when each patent is weighted by its expected potential value. As the I-district effect theory predicts, the relative differential effect is maintained even in the presence of the weighting, rejecting that the industrial district specializes only in low quality patents. However, in this case, the primacy of industrial district as the most innovative local production system can be outpaced by other local production systems.

This article analyzes the relationship between economic cycle and inequality in the Spanish regions in the period 2003-2011. The results indicate that inequality presents a clearly cyclical behavior: During the expansionary phase (2003-2007) the inequality and polarization decrease meanwhile during the recessionary phase (2008-2011) a clear increase of inequality has occurred. Also the increase of poverty has been observed. At a regional level, these regions with lower GDP per capita experience higher increases of inequality as a consequence of the crisis, so the welfare gaps between regions becomes larger.

The potential information available in administrative records managed by Public Administrations is vast for its value in improving the social and economic research and its utility to evaluate, judge and plan the public policies. An advance in the standardization and coordination of the information records and systems would reduce the marginal cost of operations and would update data in order to avoid the fraud and improve the transparency. Thus, the aim of this paper is merging three independent public databases that they refer to people with disabilities, their location and their accessibility to urban transport. To do this, a new and unique database is built using a Geographic Information System (GIS). It is the ability of GIS to reconcile spatial data from different sources that allows the creation of new data sets. This framework may improve the availability of needed data, promote integration of technology and encourage collaboration among firms and the public sector what would allow Public Administrations’ decision making taking into account the economic and social characteristics of the registered disabled people.

Social and economic interaction among small spatial units is a phenomenon that has undoubtedly become more and more persistent in time. This implies that labor markets expand through space mainly due to the continuous decrease of transport costs. Thus, greater interaction among spatial units suggests the potential existence of macro labor markets labeled as functional regions. Building functional regions for Chile is a challenge owing to the role played by the localization of natural resources, thus resulting in long-distance commutation. This document contributes to the construction of Functional Urban Regions (FUR) using Intramax method for the case of Chile. In addition, an alternative is proposed to include the effects of long-distance commutation. Results show that FURs built from Intramax algorithm that incorporate process long-distance commutation criteria show greater benefits.

This paper aims to measure and evaluate the redistributive effect of transfers and distribution of financial resources between common regime Spanish Autonomous Communities (ACs) for different models of regional funding, from 1987 to 2010. The key results are that the transfers have an important redistributive effect that reduces revenue inequality of the ACs. This effect began to be very different between the ACs 151 and 143, although it has been converging according as the latter equate their spending powers with the first. Also, we see some stability in the first models that clearly breaks with the 2002-2008 model. 

This paper presents an exercise in the determination of cities from clear and explicit quantitative criteria developed by Eurostat and the DG-Regio. The city concept is linked to the local political level, so in this sense we can talk about «administrative cities», since they are formed by one municipality, or a group of them that are physically contiguous. They are not pure population agglomerations satisfying certain criteria in terms of exceeding a threshold and/or a minimum density. We start from these urban agglomerations, called urban centers, but eventually we link them to municipalities. The main limitations of the analysis are two; on the one hand, the analysis is purely demographic, in the sense that it is the population concentration that eventually determines the number and extend of cities, other aspects such as land cover or the economic structure is absent from the analysis. On the other hand, the proposal is in line with the urban core concept, more than with the urban areas or larger urban zones that includes the urban core and its hinterland. This is so because commuting has not been taken into account in the first stage of the analysis. Building urban centers and linking them to municipalities is accomplished by means of simple Geographical Information System operations (GIS).

This paper summarizes the judgments expressed by Spanish Autonomous Communities in March 2014 on the regional financing model passed in 2009 and its implementation by the central government. With this aim, the article is organized around the principles of sufficiency, horizontal equity and autonomy. The analysis is complemented by our own assessment of the model results between 2009 and 2012 and concludes with those reform proposals on which consensus among regions is apparently greater.