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Adopted guidelines reflect a harmonised European approach to a specific scientific issue and should reflect the most recent scientific knowledge. However, whilst EU regulations are mandatory for all member states and EU directives must be followed by national laws in line with the directive, EMA guidelines do not have legal force and alternative approaches may be taken, but these obviously require more justification. This new series of the BJCP, developed in collaboration with the EMA, aims to address this issue by providing an annotated version of some relevant EMA guidelines and regulatory documents by experts. Hopefully, this will help in promoting their diffusion and in opening a forum for discussion with our readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Although the debates about access to services of general interest have been at the core of the EU territorial cohesion discourse since the late 1990s, the impact of unequal accessibility to living conditions has yet be the subject of close inspection. The paper examines the relationship between the accessibility of services of general interest and demographic and socio‐economic conditions in a specific Czech region. The analysis reveals inter‐municipal disparities and identifies spatially excluded areas. Despite the negative association of insufficient access with education and depopulation characteristics, the results suggest that demographic and socio‐economic development stems from a more complex set of factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The paper measures regional GDP growth losses that a smaller market size caused by the reintroduction of legal and administrative barriers would cause. We model augmented barriers in a Keynesian framework, pointing at four effects: a border effect, stronger for regions close to borders; an exposure effect, stronger for regions open to trade; a centrality effect, affecting areas close to the economic core; a demand concentration effect, stronger for regions close to large trading partners. By estimating border effects with data on EU NUTS 3 regions and simulating a general increase in barriers among EU countries, the four regional effects clearly emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The finding of the paper shows the relative effectiveness of the 'one size fits all' policy of the European Central Bank. The paper provides strong evidence in favor of this by testing whether the monetary policy effects (footprints) found in inflation uncertainty converge to a common level. These footprints are measured as the fraction of the estimated policy-induced reduction in this uncertainty. The testing was conducted by applying a bootstrap-type test in a regression of the rate of growth of these fractions on their initial values, computed for 16 euro area countries. ( JEL C33, E52, E58) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the growth rate volatility of European regions' per capita GDP from 1992 to 2008. We measure the regional volatility using a new methodology based on Markov matrices, and investigate its main determinants. Volatility displays a geographical pattern and a significant spatial dependence. Output composition appears one of the main drivers of volatility; among the other determinants we find a negative impact of the size of regional economies and of labour market flexibility, and a positive impact of sectoral concentration, financialization of the economy, and, occasionally, of participation in EMU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, the effectiveness of European Cohesion Policy has been evaluated in terms of GDP growth rate. In this paper, we consider the effect of the regional policy in terms of its impacts on two specific fields of intervention, namely 'research, technological development and innovation', and 'transport infrastructure'. Our econometric approach involves the use of a non-parametric regression discontinuity design technique to a uniquely-disaggregated Cohesion Policy dataset broken down according to the specific objectives of each stream of funding. The analysis considers different time intervals and sub-samples. Our results demonstrate a positive impact of Cohesion Policy interventions in these two specific fields of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several EU countries import wood pellets from the south-eastern United States. The imported wood pellets are (co-)fired in power plants with the aim of reducing overall greenhouse gas ( GHG) emissions from electricity and meeting EU renewable energy targets. To assess whether GHG emissions are reduced and on what timescale, we construct the GHG balance of wood-pellet electricity. This GHG balance consists of supply chain and combustion GHG emissions, carbon sequestration during biomass growth and avoided GHG emissions through replacing fossil electricity. We investigate wood pellets from four softwood feedstock types: small roundwood, commercial thinnings, harvest residues and mill residues. Per feedstock, the GHG balance of wood-pellet electricity is compared against those of alternative scenarios. Alternative scenarios are combinations of alternative fates of the feedstock materials, such as in-forest decomposition, or the production of paper or wood panels like oriented strand board ( OSB). Alternative scenario composition depends on feedstock type and local demand for this feedstock. Results indicate that the GHG balance of wood-pellet electricity equals that of alternative scenarios within 0-21 years (the GHG parity time), after which wood-pellet electricity has sustained climate benefits. Parity times increase by a maximum of 12 years when varying key variables (emissions associated with paper and panels, soil carbon increase via feedstock decomposition, wood-pellet electricity supply chain emissions) within maximum plausible ranges. Using commercial thinnings, harvest residues or mill residues as feedstock leads to the shortest GHG parity times (0-6 years) and fastest GHG benefits from wood-pellet electricity. We find shorter GHG parity times than previous studies, for we use a novel approach that differentiates feedstocks and considers alternative scenarios based on (combinations of) alternative feedstock fates, rather than on alternative land uses. This novel approach is relevant for bioenergy derived from low-value feedstocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the determinants of regional economic growth in the European Union adopting a non-parametric approach. Although the local-linear kernel estimator applied does not explicitly take into account the spatial dimension of the data, it is found to be consistent in our context. In addition, the geographically weighted regression turns out to be less efficient. We obtain evidence of a non-linear relationship between regional growth and its determinants in the form of parameter heterogeneity and threshold effects. These non-linearities mainly affect the initial productivity of labour, the human capital endowment and, as a novelty, the level of infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of 1990s, Danny Quah devoted several papers to the analysis of polarization and stratification in the convergence processes of economies, creating the image of the 'convergence clubs' and suggesting the importance of studying the distribution dynamics of the macroeconomic variables. As for the labour markets, Overman and Puga (2002) showed that a progressive polarization of unemployment was in fact occurring among the European regions in 1986-1996, causing a phenomenon of cross-border clusterization. Here we propose to analyse the evolution of the unemployment rates of the EU 27 regions in the last two decades assuming that the unemployment rates evolve according to a Gompertz stochastic process. The estimated parameters of the process - intrinsic growth rate, deceleration factor, volatility - represent the evolutionary path of the unemployment rate and allow for estimating the steady state of the process. A cluster analysis is performed on the steady state values of the unemployment rates. The analysis confirms the emergence of several 'convergence clubs' among the European regional labour markets, which are compared to the clusters resulting from the more traditional clusterization on the current unemployment rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We suspect that the efficiency of intergovernmental grants is related to the level of fiscal autonomy of the subsidized government. In this paper we construct and estimate a panel data model capturing the role of fiscal federalism on the effectiveness of EU structural actions in enhancing public investment. We use data from the 17 Spanish regions for the period 1993-2007. Results unambiguously support the hypothesis that the effectiveness of the structural funds decreases with larger fiscal autonomy, which could reflect the fact that fiscal decentralization in Spain has been focused to larger taxation autonomy without affecting regional income redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the seminal Blanchard and Katz regional labour market model to include interaction effects using a dynamic spatial panel data approach. Three key contributions of this extended model are: ( i) the unrealistic assumption that regions are independent of one another no longer has to be made, ( ii) the magnitude and significance of so-called spillover effects can be empirically assessed, and ( iii) both the temporal and spatial propagation of labour demand shocks can be investigated. Using annual data from 1986-2010 for 112 regions across eight EU countries, both the non-spatial and spatial models are estimated. It is found that the majority of the spillover effects are highly significant. Consistent with economic theory, the impact of a region-specific demand shock is largest in the region where the shock instigates. The shock also propagates to other regions, especially impacting the first and second-order neighbours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we argue that the capacity of regions to attract FDI is affected by the own-country effect, which can take two different forms: the first relates to the relative performance of the country of which the region is part (the between-country effect); the second concerns the relative performance of regions within their own countries (the within-country effect). By using spatial econometrics techniques we demonstrate that the own country effect exists. However, while the within effect is always positive, the between one may be either positive or negative. This means that successful regions in unsuccessful countries generally enjoy an extra- FDI premium, while regions in successful countries do not necessarily do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The above article, published online on 4 December 2015 in Wiley Online Library (), has been retracted by agreement between the author, the journal Editor in Chief, Professor Roberta Capello, and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The retraction has been agreed due to overlap between this article and the following article published in Belgeo, 'Paradigm change in regional policy : towards smart specialisation? Lessons from Flanders (Belgium)' by Ties Vanthillo and Ann Verhetsel. Belgeo [Online], 1-2 | 2012, Online since 04 December 2012, connection on 29 January 2016. URL: . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]