Primavera 2008

This paper focuses on the new architecture of Cohesion Policy and the new European financial framework within which it is set. The discussion is divided into five sections. Section one examines the structure of the new European Financial Framework, highlighting its impact on financial transfers between Europe and Spain. In section two the new architecture of Cohesion Policy is explained, pointing out the relationships with related agriculture and fisheries policies and ending with an assessment of the principal features of the new Cohesion policy architecture. Section three examines the financial resources behind Cohesion Policy and their distribution in Spain. In section four the discussion shifts to a consideration of the concepts of convergence and the nature of regions. Finally the conclusion suggests that there are significant administrative, financial and strategic planning implications of the new financial framework and remodelled Cohesion policy: for economic development in general and for regional development in particular over the coming years.

This paper looks at localization patterns in municipal population in Spain along the XX century. Using a homogeneous data base of population at the municipal level —constructed from the eleven censuses from 1900 until 2001— the paper describes the general patterns of population concentration from different perspectives. The main contribution of the paper is to offer a precise quantification of some demographic patterns, already well identified from a more qualitative perspective.

This paper studies the sources of economic growth in the Basque Country and its three historic territories (Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa), Navarre, and Spain during 1986-2004, emphasizing the role of infrastructures and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on growth, and comparing the results with those of the EU and the US. First, the growth rate of output was higher in Navarre and Spain than in the US, and much higher than in the EU. The Basque Country exhibited a better performance only during 1995-2004. Second, labor and capital were the main engines of output growth. The growth in TFP was residual and even declining in the period 1995-2004 due to the increasing contribution of labor. Those results contrast with the pattern for the US especially, where growth in TFP remained substantial. Third, infrastructures contributed approximately 0,10% to output growth. Fourth, the contribution of ICT capital to output growth was around 0,35% and it increased in the period 1995-2004. However, it is still far from the levels for the EU and especially the US. Finally, the growth rate of output per hour was above 1,20%, while the Basque Country lagged behind. Growth in capital intensity was the main source of labor productivity growth. While the contribution of infrastructures to the growth rate of output per hour declined in the period 1995-2004, that of ICT capital increased. Nevertheless the contribution of ICT capital to the growth rate of output per hour remains behind that for the EU and the US.

The aim of this work is to analyse the different impact of competitive environment changes across different indicators in the competitive environment on the Spanish companies of the textile and apparel industry. The results obtained from the contrast upon a sample composed by 5.531 SME’s of this sector show a important role of the territory and of the strategy of internationalization. For this reason, given the trend of this industry to the concentration and geographical specialization it is expected that the effect of these changes is irregular and asymmetrical between the main producing Spanish regions.

Cluster analysis has become a popular instrument in determining the innovativeness and competitive power of national and regional economies. A wide variety of methods have been employed by researchers to identify the key industrial clusters in a regional economy. This paper reports the results of practicable methodologies for identifying aggregate economic clusters —so-called “megaclusters”— in Andalusia, using the last available input output data (year 2000). The first method used, based in graph theory, classifies sectors according to substantial mutual dependency through their deliveries and purchases. The second one, based on the application of principal components to the input-output table, provide clusters according to the similarity of the intermediate purchases and/or the intermediate sales structures.

This paper provides empirical evidence on the differences in the use of fixed-term contracts across the Spanish regions, and on its origin. An extension of the traditional Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to non-linear model is, for the first time, applied to the analysis of these regional differences. Results point to differences in the use of temporality in Spain, as there are significant regional disparities in the use of fixed-term employment as a tool for labour flexibility. These differences have even a higher impact than those caused by regional heterogeneity in workers and firms’ endowment of observable characteristics. In the light of this evidence, policies designed to fight against the anomalously high rate of temporality is Spain should be questioned, as they have not taken into account regional uniqueness.

This work is focused on testing the following hypothesis: “The competitiveness of a Portuguese professional soccer team is influenced by the economic development level of the surrounding region.” Using a rational choice model and working with binary time-series cross-sectional data, this work focuses on a Portuguese professional soccer team from 1970 to 1999. This is the first work on the teams and economy of Portugal that tests this hypothesis. The results corroborate the main importance of three factors that increase the probability that a municipality will house the head office of a team that plays in the first league: 1) the per capita income, 2) level of infrastructures, and 3) demographic dimension.

Economic globalization has rendered innovation policy as the main instrument for improving —or keeping— the threatened competitiveness of firms and regions. This article analyzes the level of innovation in Spain, the role played by Information and Communication Technologies in regional growth, the fundamentals for public intervention and the regional Spanish Research, Development and innovation Programmes.