Open Access
Quality of government and regional resilience in the European Union. Evidence from the Great Recession
(Wiley, 2019) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Ríos Ibáñez, Vicente; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
This paper examines the relationship between quality of government and regional resilience in the European Union during the Great Recession. The results show that the quality of government is an important factor when shaping the regional reaction to the crisis. Our estimates reveal that higher quality of government is associated with greater regional resilience over the Great Recession. This is partly due to the role played in this context by spatial spillovers induced by the quality of government in neighbouring regions. The observed link between governance and regional resilience is robust to the inclusion in the analysis of different explanatory variables that may affect both government quality and regional resilience. Likewise, our findings do not depend on the specific dimension of governance considered, the estimation method or the econometric specification employed to capture the nature of spatial spillovers.
Open Access
Regional specializacion in the European Union
(2004) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Gil Canaleta, Carlos; Pascual Arzoz, Pedro; Economía; Ekonomia
This paper examines productive specialization in the regions of the European Union over the period 1977 to 1999 using the information provided by various methodological instruments. The results obtained reveal a process of convergence in regional productive structures during the twenty-three years considered. This has been due to the behavior of regions with high levels of specialization at the start of the period, whose productive structures have tended to shift towards the European average over time. The analysis carried out also highlights the major role played by regional size, level of development and geographical location in explaining specialization in the European context. Finally, the empirical evidence provided suggests that changes in regional productive structures are closely linked to the evolution of the spatial distribution of per capita income in the European Union.
Open Access
Regional disparities and within-country inequality in the European Union
(Universidad de Huelva, 2019) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Economía; Ekonomia
Este trabajo examina las disparidades espaciales en términos de desarrollo en el interior de los Estados miembros de la UE. Para ello se utilizan datos correspondientes a 272 regiones pertenecientes a 28 países a lo largo del periodo 1996-2010. El análisis llevado a cabo confirma que la desigualdad en el interior de los diferentes países es un componente importante de la desigualdad espacial observada en el conjunto de la UE. De hecho, la desigualdad regional ha aumentado en la mayoría de los países de la UE durante el período objeto de estudio. Los resultados también ponen de manifiesto la relevancia de los procesos de desarrollo nacional a la hora de explicar la evolución de la desigualdad regional, si bien la relación no es lineal. Los avances del PIB per cápita nacional inicialmente contribuyen a aumentar las disparidades regionales. No obstante, una vez alcanzado un determinado nivel de desarrollo la relación se hace negativa, de forma que los países más desarrollados tienden a experimentar menores niveles de desigualdad regional. Asimismo, la apertura de las fronteras nacionales a los mercados internacionales está asociada con mayores disparidades espaciales. Al mismo tiempo, los países con una mejor calidad institucional se caracterizan por registrar menor desigualdad regional. Estos resultados no dependen de la medida concreta utilizada para capturar la magnitud de las disparidades espaciales en el interior de los diferentes países.
Open Access
Territorial mobility: a measuring proposal
(2005) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Pascual Arzoz, Pedro; Rapún Gárate, Manuel; Economía; Ekonomia
As a contribution to the study of intradistributional mobility, this paper introduces a family of functions whose usefulness as mobility measures is justified by different theoretical results. Indeed, as a particular case, this family includes the Bartholomew index, which is widely used in the literature devoted to the dynamic analysis of personal income distribution. The paper also contains, by way of example, an application to the study of mobility in regional per capita income distribution in the European Union between 1977 and 1999.
Open Access
Inequality, polarisation and regional mobility in the European Union
(2004) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Gil Canaleta, Carlos; Pascual Arzoz, Pedro; Rapún Gárate, Manuel; Economía; Ekonomia
This paper examines the distribution dynamics of regional per capita income in the European Union between 1977 and 1999. To achieve this aim, we combine a non-parametric approach with the information provided by various measures used in the literature on personal income distribution. The results obtained suggest that regional inequality and polarisation have decreased in the European context over the period considered. Likewise, the observed level of intradistributional mobility is relatively low. Furthermore, our findings reveal the important role played by the national component and the spatial dimension in the distribution dynamics.
Open Access
Quality of government in European regions: do spatial spillovers matter?
(Taylor & Francis, 2019-10-21) Ezcurra Orayen, Roberto; Ríos Ibáñez, Vicente; Economía; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE
This paper examines the role played by spatial spillovers in shaping the regional distribution of quality of government across the European Union. To do so, it constructs a hybrid spatial weights matrix combining geographical, technological and social distances between the European regions. The results reveal that the quality of government in neighbouring regions has a positive and statistically significant effect on one region¿s quality of government, which highlights the relevance of spatial effects in this context. This finding is robust to the inclusion in the analysis of different variables that may affect regional governance. Likewise, the observed effect of neighbouring regions does not depend on the specific dimension of governance considered, the spatial weights matrix used to describe the spatial linkages between the European regions, or the econometric specification employed to capture the nature of spatial spillovers. The results also show that policy innovations related to governance spread from regions with high and intermediate levels of quality of government.