We examine whether a hospitals quality is affected by the quality provided by other hospitals in the same market. We first set out a theoretical model with regulated prices which specifies conditions on demand and cost functions which determine whether a hospital will have higher quality when...

Bootstrapping methods have so far been rarely used to evaluate spatial data sets. Based on an extensive Monte Carlo study we find that also for spatial, cross-sectional data, the wild bootstrap test proposed by Davidson and Flachaire (2008) based on restricted residuals clearly outperforms...

Growth rate data that are collected incompletely in cross-sections is a quite frequent problem. Chow and Lin (1971) have developed a method for predicting unobserved disaggregated time series and we propose an extension of the procedure for completing cross-sectional growth rates similar to the...

Spatial dependence is an important factor in regional economic growth analysis, especially in terms of population, employment, and per capita income. This paper employs spatial econometric techniques and U.S. Census Bureau county-level data for the period of 1980-2010 to identify and estimate...

The purpose of this paper to provide added insight into clustering as it pertains to the United States organic sector. I identify clusters of United States certified organic operations by showing how a formal definition of spatial clusters can emerge from an estimated model that accounts for...

The purpose of this research is to investigate factors impacting farmers’ decisions to engage in multifunctional activities, which are hypothesized to enhance the sustainability and prosperity of farms and their communities. To achieve this research goal, I will break it up into two specific...

The tourism in Portugal has been an important contribution to the economic development of the country, namely in zones where is difficult to implement others activities, specifically the manufacturing. The objective of this work is to analyze, for the period 2002-2011, with spatial econometric...

The inverse relationship between economic growth and labor market developments in the form of changes in the unemployment rate is known in economic literature as Okun’s law. The objectives of this paper are to estimate a regionalized Okun coefficient and its associated (regional) unemployment...