This paper examines the association between one of the most basic institutional forms, the family, and a series of demographic, educational, social, and economic indicators across regions in Europe. Using Emmanuel Todd’s classification of medieval European family systems, we identify potential...

This paper discusses recent developments in the literature on local and regional innovative performance to show how an ‘integrated’ conceptual framework based on the cross-fertilization of different theories can serve as a foundation for the comparative analysis of territorial innovation...

This paper discusses recent developments in the literature on local and regional innovative performance in order to show how an 'integrated' conceptual framework based on the cross-fertilisation of different theories can serve as a foundation for the comparative analysis of territorial...

This paper explores the relationship between social capital and happiness both in Europe as a whole, as well as in its four main geographical macro-regions – North, South, East and West – separately. We test the hypothesis of whether social capital, in its three-fold definition established...

The sector business services contributes directly and indirectly to aggregate economic growth in Europe. The direct contribution comes from the sector’s own dynamism. Though the business-services industry appears to be characterised by strong cyclical volatility, there was also a strong...

This paper’s objective is twofold. Firstly, it presents the case for services-related policies in the current European Union (EU). The services economy is frequently misunderstood, due to old and new myths that stem from the classic economic tradition. These myths obscure the role of the...

The paper lays down a strategy consisting of Innovation, Internalisation of Externalities, and Integration – called Triple I. ‘Innovation’ is seen along value chain management in a systems perspective, driven by competition and participation of stakeholders. ‘Internalisation’ refers to...

The EU began railway reform in earnest around the turn of the century. Two ‘railway packages’ have meanwhile been adopted amounting to a series of directives and a third package has been proposed. A range of complementary initiatives has been undertaken or is underway. This paper inspects...

By adopting a semiparametric approach, the 'traditional' regional knowledge production function is developed in three complementary directions. First, the model is augmented with region-specic time trends in order to account for endogeneity due to selection on unobservables. Second, the...

The paper looks at the genesis of innovation in the EU regions in order to shed light on the link between innovative inputs (R&D and Human Capital) and the genesis of economically valuable knowledge. The "traditional" regional Knowledge Production Function (KPF) is innovatively developed in...