One of the most important decisions that governments face is how to allocate the public resources necessary for development, given each country’s budget constraints. According to the literature on the links between wealth and institutional performance, highly kleptocratic countries are...

One of the most important decisions that governments face is how to allocate the public resources necessary for development, given each country’s budget constraints. According to the literature on the links between wealth and institutional performance, highly kleptocratic countries are...

A growing body of theoretical contributions and empirical studies has explored how the spatial distribution of public resources and governmental transfers is likely to be driven by efficiency and equity, as well as by political considerations. This article applies this line of research to...

The importance of political local coalitions in shaping local governance structures conducive to economic growth has been a subject of research for numerous years, both in rich economies as well as in emerging countries. In spite of such amount of research, little attention has yet been paid to...

In this paper we challenge the ability of the conventional methods initiated by Barro and Sala-i-Martin in the early 1990s to detect actual convergence or divergence trends across countries or regions and suggest an alternative dynamic framework of analysis, which allows for a better...

Recent political and academic discourse about devolution has tended to stress the economic advantages of the transfer of power from national to subnational institutions. This 'economic dividend' arises through devolved administrations' ability to tailor policies to local needs, generate...

Although it is commonly accepted that investing in technology and research and development (R&D) is a basic catalyst for the genesis of economic activity, there is less consensus on the spatial significance and returns of the R&D effort for regional and local economies. It is often argued that...

The geographical sources of innovation of firms have been hotly debated. While the traditional view is that physical proximity within city-regions is key for the innovative capacity of firms, the literature on 'global pipelines' has been stressing the importance of establishing communication...

This paper analyses the role of infrastructure endowment and investment in the genesis of regional growth in the European Union. It assesses the economic effects of the existence and improvement of transport networks in light of their interactions with innovation and local socio-economic...

Research on the impact of innovation on regional economic performance in Europe has fundamentally followed three approaches: (1) the analysis of the link between investment in research and development (R&D), patents, and economic growth; (2) the study of the existence and efficiency of regional...