Crime and regional economic growth in Mexico: A spatial perspective

The aim of this paper is to examine the effects of crime on regional economic growth in Mexico. We estimate a growth model using a spatial panel data model and test for the presence and type of spatial interaction, as proposed by Elhorst. Our results suggest that a two‐way spatial Durbin model best fits the data, crime exerts a negative total effect on economic growth across Mexican states, particularly homicides and robbery, and significant spillover effects seem to reinforce the negative impact on regional growth.     

大跨空间结构技术创新与实践

介绍了大跨空间结构的发展现状和一些典型的工程实例,对空间结构的关键理论、结构体系、新材料等进行梳理.结合具体工程实例,重点探讨了柔性空间结构体系,如全张拉结构的结构特点以及设计方法、铝合金空间网格结构及现代胶合木空间结构的材料特性和设计要点,论述了新型空间结构的技术创新与实践.     

Local urban growth controls and regional economic growth

Local land use regulations have been adopted to restrict population growth and urban sprawl in an attempt to prevent future problems like congestion, pollution, and loss of open space. However, when regulations become widespread in a region, it can be difficult for young workers and newcomers to find appropriate housing in the region. Because local governments may neglect the effects of their policies on the rest of the region, the resulting population size can be inefficient. We show that local adoption of housing regulations tends to over-restrict population growth when there are strong agglomeration economies in the regional production. On the other hand, when there is congestion in production, coordination among jurisdictions is undesirable if business interests are neglected.     

Banking structure and regional economic growth: lessons from Italy

Following the literature on the comparative advantage of small versus large banks at lending to small businesses and in light of the worldwide decline in the number of intermediaries that specialise in this type of lending associated with deregulation in the banking industry, we examine the role that specific categories of banks have played in the context of Italy’s regional economic growth. Over the estimation period, 1970–1993, which ends in the year of full implementation of the banking reform that introduced statutory de-specialisation and branching liberalisation, Italy featured not only a substantial presence of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the real sector, as is still the case, but also a large and heterogeneous set of credit institutions with different ownership, size and lending styles. Exploiting these peculiarities we study the role of specific intermediaries and gather indirect evidence concerning the likely effects, ceteris paribus, of the current consolidation processes. The main findings, stemming from panel regressions with fixed effects, are as follows. The overall size of the financial sector has a weak impact on growth, but some intermediaries are better than others: cooperative banks and special credit institutions play a positive role, banks of national interest (basically large private banks) and public law banks (government-owned banks) either do not affect growth or have a negative influence depending on how growth is measured. Cooperative banks were mostly small banks and special credit institutions were all but large conglomerates with standardized credit policies, hence our results lend support to the current worldwide concerns of a reduction in the availability of credit to SMEs resulting from consolidation and regulatory reforms in the banking industry.

Urban spatial structure,agglomeration economies,and economic growth in Barcelona: An intra‐metropolitan perspective*

This paper presents an intra‐metropolitan approach to analyse the impact of urban spatial structure on local economic growth. Focusing on the Barcelona metropolitan region (BMR) between 1986 and 2001, we estimate a municipal employment growth model in which dynamic agglomeration economies related to urban spatial structure are considered using distance to employment centres, to assess metropolitan effects, and distance‐weighted variables, to measure neighbourhood effects. The results obtained show the existence of neighbourhood specialization economies and metropolitan urbanization‐localization economies fostering local growth. All of this leads to the paper's main conclusion: urban spatial structure is important for economic growth in an intra‐metropolitan context.     

The paradox of unequal regional investment and equal regional economic growth in China

China's policy on Special Economic Zones has attracted increasing flows of direct foreign investment to China. The investment has been very unequally distributed among China's 30 regions.  The article focuses on the regional economic growth as a result of the direct foreign investment in the region and its spillover effects on neighboring regions. The unequal distribution of direct foreign investment should in principle tend to enlarge the regional economic differences. The article, however, shows that this is not the result of the investment.  The empirical findings highlight the impact of direct foreign investment on the Chinese regional economies in transition. Received: November 2000/Accepted: August 2001     

Technological interdependence and regional growth in Europe: Proximity and synergy in knowledge spillovers

The economic growth literature suggests that knowledge spillovers are subject to distance decay effects. In this paper the main aim is to provide a theoretical framework and empirical evidence on the role played by other kinds of proximities, namely relational, social and technological proximity, in explaining productivity growth. Using a sample of 249 EU 27 NUTS 2 regions in the period 1990–2004, semiparametric spatial autoregressive models are estimated. Results provide evidence of a positive role of social and relational proximities as important channels of knowledge spillovers, and on the fact that, when simultaneously present, different kinds of proximities generate synergic effects on growth. Resumen La literatura sobre el crecimiento económico sugiere que los spillovers de conocimiento están sujetos a efectos de deterioro por distancia. El objetivo principal de este artículo es proporcionar un marco teórico y pruebas empíricas sobre el papel desempeñado por otros tipos de proximidades (relacional, social y tecnológica), a la hora de explicar el crecimiento de la productividad. Utilizando una muestra de 249 regiones NUTS 2 de la UE 27 para el período 1990‐2004, se estiman modelos autorregresivos espaciales semiparamétricos. Los resultados aportan pruebas del papel positivo de las proximidades sociales y relacionales como canales importantes de spillovers de conocimientos, y del hecho de que, cuando se presentan simultáneamente, los diferentes tipos de proximidades generan efectos sinérgicos sobre el crecimiento.      

Natural disasters,economic growth and spatial spillovers: Evidence from a flash flood in Brazil

In this paper, a flash flood that occurred in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina in 2008 is used to investigate the existence of spatial spillovers from natural disasters in geographically-linked areas. In order to do so, we estimated a Difference-in-Differences model that explicitly allows for the existence of spatial interactions within affected and unaffected regions. Our results show that municipalities directly affected by the flood suffered an 7.6% decrease in GDP per capita in the year of the disaster. Three years after the flood, however, GDP per capita rebounded back to pre-disaster levels in all sectors but the Agricultural sector. Finally, our spatial estimations show that spillovers exist and are economically relevant.     

Multi-regional economic growth with public good and regional fiscal policies in a small-open economy

This paper is concerned with multi-regional economic growth with environment, capital accumulation and regional public goods. The economy has a fixed number of regions, and there are a production sector and a public sector in a region. The production sector provides goods in perfectly competitive markets. The public sector, which is financed by the regional government’s tax incomes, supplies regional public goods. The public goods affect both firms and households. We show the existence of a unique equilibrium in the dynamic system. We simulate the equilibrium of 3-region economy and examine effects of changes in some parameters on the spatial economy. The comparative statics analysis provides some important insights. For instance, as the technologically least advanced region (TLAR) improves its productivity or amenity, the national output and wealth are reduced, and more people are attracted to the region from the more productive regions. The labor forces in the TLAR’s two sectors are increased, and the labor forces in the other two regions are reduced. The change pattern for the capital distribution is similar to the change in the population distribution. The output levels of the two sectors in the TLAR are increased and in the other two regions are reduced. The TLAR’s total and per capita expenditures on public goods are increased; the other two regions’ total and per capita expenditures are reduced. The per-worker output level, wealth and consumption level per capita, wage rate in the TLAR are increased, and those variables in the other two regions are reduced. The lot size falls and the land rent rises in the TLAR, and the trends are opposite in the other two regions.     

Inequalities in income and education and regional economic growth in western Europe

Does inequality matter for regional growth? This paper addresses this question, using regionally aggregated microeconomic data for more than 100,000 individuals over a period of 6 years. The aim is to examine the relationship between income and educational distribution and regional economic growth in western Europe. Our results indicate that, given existing levels of inequality, an increase in a region’s income and educational inequality has a significant positive association with subsequent economic growth. Educational achievement is positively correlated with economic growth, but the impact of initial income levels is unclear. Finally, the results suggest that inequalities in educational attainment levels matter more for economic performance than average educational attainment. The above findings are not only robust to the definition of income distribution, but also across inequality measurements.     

Long-run regional population disparities in Europe during modern economic growth: a case study of Spain

The objective of the present study is to analyze the disparities in long-run regional population growth in continental Europe. To this end, we propose a convergence equation for regional population distribution for eight Western European countries in the period 1850–2000. Our results show that divergence in economic growth at regional level has been a common pattern in Europe. We choose the case of Spain in order to depict the characteristics of this process of regional demographic divergence, studying the spatial dynamic of the Spanish population, focusing firstly on the processes of concentration–dispersion on a general scale. Finally, we establish a regional typology of long-term Spanish population growth, based on cluster analysis.     

贵阳比例坝垃圾填埋场--防渗工程技术创新

贵阳市城市生活垃圾卫生填埋场项目是国家发改委．贵州省计委批准的重点工程国债项目．建设单位为贵阳市环卫设施建设有限公司。比例坝填埋场是该项目的子项之一．国家电力公司贵阳勘测设计研究院参与了比例坝填埋场工程的可行性研究、初步设计及施工图设计工作。工程于2000年年初正式动工兴建。     

A joint spatial econometric model for regional FDI and output growth

This paper studies the joint dynamics of foreign direct investments (FDI) and output growth in European regions by using spatially augmented systems of equations modeling framework that incorporates third-region and spillover effects. The joint framework is used to study the dynamic impacts of regional human capital endowments, which demonstrates the importance of explicitly accounting for an endogenous relationship. The relationship is highlighted in a stylized projection exercise, where the long-run impacts are pronounced in Eastern Europe and capital cities. Overall, ignoring the relationship of regional economic performance and FDI distorts the implied transmission mechanism, which is of utmost importance for policy makers.