Endogeneous growth theory views externalities and particularly externalities associated with knowledge spillovers as the engine of economic growth. In some influential papers (e.g. Glaeser et al. 1992) it is argued that these knowledge spillovers do not transmit costlessly over space. Rather,...

The aim of this paper is to shed light on how real income has developed across the member states and regions of the EC and to consider what demands this will place on regional policy. According to the principle of subsidiarity, a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition for EC intervention...

This paper sets up an economic geography model to show the endogenous forces that determine the degree of industry concentration in the course of economic development. The model includes centrifugal forces, such as home market effects and access to intermediate suppliers, and centripetal forces,...

Urban concentration differs across countries. One determinant of these differences is economic development, which first increases and subsequently decreases urban concentration. I condition the degree of urban concentration on the potential of countries to develop a balanced urban system. These...

Night lights could be a valuable proxy of economic activity at the subnational level when GDP data are lacking or of poor quality. Supplementing Henderson et al.’s (2012) analysis at the national level, we assess the stability of the elasticity of GDP with regard to night lights across regions...

We develop a comprehensive wealth index for cities that measures their endowment with environmental, energy, social, human, and economic capital stocks. We apply this index to the 100 largest autonomous cities in Germany. We find that (i) a good economic performance does not need to come at the...

This paper investigates whether proximity to universities matters for corporate patenting in Chinese provinces. The investigation is based on estimating regional knowledge production functions using a Chinese provincial dataset for the years from 2000 to 2008. Geographic proximity of companies...

The present paper aims at explaining the regional deconcentration of economic activities in (West) Germany during the past two decades. Using an idea-based endogenous growth model that encloses several innovative sectors, and in which economic activity is subject to externalities of...

Although it is well known that Markov process theory, frequently applied in the literature on income convergence, imposes some very restrictive assumptions upon the data generating process, these assumptions have generally been taken for granted so far. The present paper proposes, resp. recalls...

Foreign-owned firms are frequently viewed as an important source of new capital, access to world markets and employment generation and there exist numerous studies on the determinants of FDI flows and the role of incentives designed to attract FDI. Similarly important for economic growth are...