Otoño 2009

The EU-funded program INTERREG was designed to avoid the national boundaries to be an obstacle nor to the balanced territorial development nor to the integration of the European territory. Besides, its aim was an integrated action for the economic development and economic and social cohesion. This initiative has been quite relevant for Spain, which has become one of the most to benefit from European Territorial Policy and, in particular, from the cross-border and trans-national policy. From 2007 onwards, it has been established a new legal framework for the EU-Cohesion Policy, in which the Interregional Cooperation reaches a higher legal level and in which the Spanish bordering areas will keep on benefiting from financial support.

This paper focuses on estimating interregional human capital migration flows in Spain, based on the assumption of key hypothesis on data and temporal characteristics of educated population migration flows. The results point to the increasing intensity of medium and high educated gross migration flows and confirm Madrid, the Basque Country and Catalonia as the three main independent poles of attraction and emission for educated migrants. Likewise, there is a reasonable concordance between education levels of immigrants and the needs for educated workers in Spanish regions. However, the average amount of years of study within the active population in the region is increasing while that of the immigrants remains unaltered, thus immigration seemed not to be a key factor in reducing regional inequalities in human capital endowments.

The growth of cities implies an extension of the metropolitan space. New sub-centers appear which guarantee the provision of goods and services throughout the metropolitan space without daily population displacements. However, this type of development could either reinforce the hegemony of the main city centre or lead to its decline. When a strong centre exists, and it is maintained, is easy to organize an efficient network of public transport which guarantees contact among all the social classes and avoids the segregation of certain minorities or lower income groups. Certain political decisions, such as intra-metropolitan decentralization or infrastructures which provide incentives for private vehicle use, could lead to the loss of hegemony of the main centre. As a consequence, some very important cities in the world are very complicated to manage. This paper analyses the specific case of the main Colombian city, Bogota. This is a very relevant case because some of the policies of this city are an example to other cities of Latin America. The data show an important decline of the centre of Bogota coupled with the development of new peripheral centers of the metropolitan area. Our analysis of the capital of Colombia could be useful for other similar Latin American.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of the European Funds received by the Autonomous Community of Madrid during the period 2000-2006. To carry out this objective, we shall work a social accounting matrix with data from the year 2000, SAM-MAD-2000. A model of linear multipliers will be used to analyse how exogenous income injections coming from these Funds bring about an impact on endogenous accounts. We consider the use of a linear multiplier technique adequate since the strategy traditionally followed by European Regional Policy has been that of fostering development through investments that bring about structural changes in key sectors that boost economic growth in the region. This technique makes it possible to identify the sectors that benefit more from the injections of income from European Funds. The advantage of this methodology versus the input-output methodology is its greater scope when reflecting the impact of community aid on all sectors of the economy, including Institutional Sectors.

This paper analyzes the impact of a variety of socioeconomic and regional factors to explain Internet use by individuals in Spain. Using probit models we obtain that socio-demographic variables explain Internet use in Spain. The influence of education, age and occupation seem to be particularly strong. We also find that regional variables (percentage of employment in the services sector, GDP per capita, ICT capital) show a positive influence on Internet use by individuals. The results allow us to identify variables to promote policy actions within the framework of the Information Society.

The article begins with a review of the concepts regarding the interrelationships between knowledge and urban development, proposing a scheme of four main channels whereby cities join the knowledge society: namely, economic structure, human capital, innovation effort and networking. Upon this basis, Spanish cities are subjected to a comparative analysis of their knowledge indicators in each of these components, considering the degree of spatial concentration and possible spatial correlations among these indicators. The analysis concludes with a typology of Spanish cities according to ways of access to the knowledge society.

In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of regional R&D public programs in Catalonia (Spain) with a two-stage procedure. Firstly, we compare the performance of publicly subsidised companies (treated) with that of similar, but unsubsidised companies (non-treated). We use the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) methodology to construct a control group which, with regard to its observable characteristics, is as similar as possible to the treated group, and that allows us to identify firms which maintain the same propensity to receive public subsidies. Secondly, and once a valid comparison group has been established, we compare the respective performance of each firm using regression techniques. As a result, we find that recipient firms, on average, seem to increase their value added as a direct result of public subsidy programs.

Although there exists abundant literature about convergence across the Spanish regions, most of the research has been developed by using cross-section regressions or data panel techniques with fixed effects, resulting in biased estimates that may make their conclusions less tenable. In addition, many of these studies do not explicitly account for the effect of the traditional variables determining the steady state. This paper is aimed at overcoming these limitations. The main conclusion that stems from our analysis is that the deep reduction in steady-state disparities across the Spanish regions can be attributed to a large extent to the differences in their population growth rates, which are due mainly to inter-regional migrations.

In this note we introduce the 1995 Spanish Interregional Input-Output Model, which was estimated using a wide set of One-region input-output tables and interregional trade matrices, estimated for each sector using interregional transport flows. Based on this framework, and by means of the Hypothetical Regional Extraction Method, the interregional backward and feedback effects are computed, capturing the pull effect of every region over the rest of Spain, through their sectoral relations within the intermediate demand.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of fiscal decentralization on subcentral governments’ budgetary discipline according to the evidence of case studies of ten countries that have significantly different institutional environments. Before analysing the case studies, we systematize the effect of the different characteristics of the fiscal institutional environment on the central government decision on whether (or not) to intervene assigning additional resources to the subcentral government when they issue debt, i.e. bailing them out. The experiences of these different countries show that fiscal decentralization can discipline the subcentral governments’ budgetary decisions, as it happens, for instance, in the USA, Canada and Hungary. However, there are no specific characteristics of the institutional environment that guarantees subcentral budgetary discipline. The absence of bailout in the past builds the reputation of the central government and it is a common characteristic in the three countries of the sample where subcentral governments have hard budget constraints.