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This innovative book explores the adoption of energy-saving technologies and their impact on energy efficiency improvements. It contains a mix of theoretical and empirical contributions, and combines and compares economic and physical indicators to monitor and analyse trends in energy efficiency. The authors pay considerable attention to empirical research on the determinants of energy-saving investment including uncertainty, energy-price volatility and subsidies. They also discuss the role of energy modelling in policy design and the potential effect of energy policies on technology diffusion --

This book was written on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI). It is the central commemorative memento of the Association's first 50 years. The book was coauthored by a team of a number of the leading scholars in the global regional science community. It documents the progress that has been made to date in interdisciplinary regional science research and represents a self-critical assessment of research priorities for the future. It contains a wealth of factual information about the development of the Regional Science Association International and of the Association's flagship journal Papers in Regional Science. At the end of the volume, Walter Isard, the founder of the multidisciplinary field of Regional Science, looks ahead to some possible new developments

The importance and relevance of methods to deal with spatial effects in econometric models has received increased recognition, in part due to a renewed interest for the role of space and spatial interaction in social science theory, the availability of large socio-economic data sets with geo-referenced observations, and the development of an efficient and low cost computational technology to handle such observations, in the form of geographical information systems. This volume reflects the state of the art and indicates promising new directions for research and applications. These include alternative model specifications, estimators and tests for regression models and new perspectives on dealing with spatial effects in models with limited dependent variables and space-time data

The worldwide trend to decentralize the responsibilities and budgets of governments impacts local firm dynamics in various ways. We use the example of Spain to test empirically whether the decentralization of governance has been conducive to increased diversification and a more even city-size distribution in the Spanish urban system during a period of continuous reductions in transport costs. To this end we develop a bivariate probit regression framework to assess the probability that cities diversify or specialize over time, using a sample of 69 urban areas in Spain during the period 1995-2007. We exploit unique firm-level and time-varying transport-cost data to control for the role of a city's market potential, city size, transport costs, labor-force skill composition, product standardization and historical patterns of specialization. We find a high probability that a city will diversify if it is the capital of a regional government or located in a relatively decentralized region, while the opposite is true for the probability that a city will specialize. Also, we find that a city's status as a regional capital reinforces the positive effect of a high (low) internal market potential on the probability of diversification (specialization). A high (low) external market potential only increases the probability that a city will become specialized (diversified) if it is a regional capital. We argue that the link between decentralization and specialization patterns in the urban system deserves more attention in the empirical literature on decentralization's impact on economic growth, income inequality and regional disparities.

ABSTRACTIn recent years there is a growing interest in determining the impact of inequality on economic growth. Theoretical papers as well as empirical applications have, however, produced controversial results. Although there is a considerable part of the literature that considers inequality detrimental to growth, more recent studies have challenged this result and found a positive effect of inequality on growth. In this paper, we provide a contribution to the empirical puzzle by using meta‐analysis to systematically describe, identify and analyse the variation in outcomes of empirical studies. We find that estimation methods, data quality and sample coverage systematically affect the results. The results point out that it will be particularly useful to increasingly focus research on determining the impact of income inequality on economic growth using single‐country data at the regional level, or a relatively homogeneous set of countries with adequate controls for country‐wide differences in economic, social and institutional characteristics.

"In recent years there is a growing interest in determining the impact of inequality on economic growth. Theoretical papers as well as empirical applications have, however, produced controversial results. Although there is a considerable part of the literature that considers inequality detrimental to growth, more recent studies have challenged this result and found a positive effect of inequality on growth. In this paper, we provide a contribution to the empirical puzzle by using meta-analysis to systematically describe, identify and analyse the variation in outcomes of empirical studies. We find that estimation methods, data quality and sample coverage systematically affect the results. The results point out that it will be particularly useful to increasingly focus research on determining the impact of income inequality on economic growth using single-country data at the regional level, or a relatively homogeneous set of countries with adequate controls for country-wide differences in economic, social and institutional characteristics." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

AbstractThis paper studies the determinants of technological catch‐up considering spatial and sectoral aggregation of industries. We investigate how geographical and technological proximity to the technology leader impact regional employment growth. We model technological progress by means of a hierarchical process of catch‐up to the technology leader. We also incorporate measures for knowledge spillover effects to test the roles of competition, specialisation, and diversity at the industry level. Empirical results using data at the county level for different economic sectors (2‐dig NAICS) for the United States indicate that human capital plays a crucial role in promoting sectoral employment growth. The association between technological/geographical distance to the technology leader and employment growth varies across sectors.