The scope of the paper is to examine relationship between quality of administrative environment for business and propensity to become entrepreneur. Two different approaches to business activity are taken into account: opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor,...

In this paper we try to identify manufacturing and service clusters in Spain, using data from Mercantile Registers of 2006. The proposed methodology partially follows contributions of Duranton and Overman (2005), Brenner (2003 and 2004) and Ellison and Glaser (1997), but departing from them we...

This paper investigates the main determinants of economic growth in the European Union from a regional perspective. The analysis is based on a recently available dataset from the European Cluster Observatory covering 253 European regions over the period 2002-2008. In addition to the traditional...

For long time, the applicability of economic theories of cities, urbanisation and urban development as well to Russian cities was hampered by the lack of data beyond population figures. Since 1990, some contributions of Richard Rowland with regard to urban development in Russia referred to...

This paper aims at develop an evaluation of the functional polycentrism of Portuguese municipalities. For that purpose, we develop a critical assessment of the concept of polycentrism and functional polycentrism whose assumptions guide most of the policies of regional planning, and present the...

This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate concerning the role of heterogeneity for the GC competitive advantage. With this aim, we focus on different sources of heterogeneity and study how the different level of heterogeneity affects the performance of GCs. Specifically, we consider...

Regional development has been in the centre of interest among both academics but also decision makers in the central and local governments of many European countries. Identifying the key problems that regions face and considering how these findings could be effectively used as a basis for...

Despite increasing educational attainment and greater labor market participation of women in the last decades, occupational segregation and gender differences in employment patterns remain stable. While men continue to have fairly stable employment patterns, women’s occupational trajectories...

Nowadays, globalization, technological innovation, migration and population ageing, make it increasingly difficult to predict the future of regions. Identifying the key problems that regions face and considering how these findings could be effectively used as a basis for planning region's...

The literature on clustering has highlighted several advantages of industrial agglomerations. Persons and firms benefit from the production and innovation activities of neighbouring companies in the same and related industries. Considering such benefits, which are viewed as positive...