Theoretical and empirical research suggests a connection between the presence of role models and the emergence of entrepreneurs. Existing entrepreneurs may act as role models for self-employment candidates by providing successful examples. By explicitly considering the self-employment rates of...

Demographic change is expected to affect labour markets in very different ways on a regional scale. The objective of this paper is to explore the spatio-temporal patterns of recent distributional changes in the workers age structure, innovation output and skill composition for German regions by...

This paper focuses on the functional specialisation of a system of cities, with particular attention to the role and the formation process of secondary business centers. At the european level, the latters can be identified in the large number of regional capitals, and properly defined as cities...

Empirical assessments of the forecasting power of spatial panel data econometric models are still scarcely available. Moreover, several methodological contributions rely on simulated data to showcase the potential of proposed methods. While simulations may be useful to evaluate the properties of...

Culture is more and more considered as an important driver of tourism. However, it is critical, for policymakers, to evaluate the potential returns from investments in culture and generally cultural offer, in particular in multiregion settings with a potentially inefficient distribution of...

An avalanche of empirical studies has addressed the validity of the rank-size rule (or Zipf’s law) in a multi-city context in many countries. City size in most countries seems to obey Zipf’s law, but the question under which conditions (e.g. sample size, spatial scale) this ‘law’ holds...

In this paper we empirically assess the evolution for the EU regions of both employment and unemployment before and after the Global Crisis. After a review of the literature on the theories and key determinants of regional unemployment, we shall overview the main findings concerning the labour...

This paper analyzes the relationship between the performance of incumbent firms and the net entry of new firms by combining different theoretical views of entrepreneurship. It shows that new knowledge and ideas created but not commercialized by incumbents are an important source of...

Culture is gaining increasing importance in the modern tourism industry, and represents a significant force of attraction for tourists (both domestic and international). Cultural tourism allows destinations and regions to expand their customer base, diversify their offer, extend the stay of the...

This paper analyzes convergence in per capita gross regional product of Russia’s regions during the period 1995-2010, when regional data are available. Using a panel regression framework we find no evidence for beta-convergence. Instead we find divergence, which is, however, attenuated over...