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The employment and population growth equilibrium model is extended to allow for differentiated linkages between rural and urban regions and among rural regions. The model is applied to examine the regional disparities within the rural economy of Northern Ireland between 2001 and 2007. To represent the theoretical idea of commuter shed, commuting data are used to construct the spatial weighting matrix. The results reveal positive rural-urban but negative rural-rural linkages, suggesting that rural regions benefit from economic growth in urban regions but compete with each other. The direct and indirect spillover effects are shown using simulation examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we estimate the technical efficiency of Mexican states using stochastic production frontier models. The empirical section uses panel data over the period 1988-2008. A distinctive feature of the paper is the use of socioeconomic and location data in order to control for the heterogeneity of the states. We find that crime rate negatively affects the efficiency of the states and that its effect is only significant after a certain level. Our results also show that education and productive specialization shift the production frontier upwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inter-regional spillover effects are central to China's growth policy; yet relatively little is known about the strength and duration of these spillovers and whether their characteristics have changed over time. This article examines the spillover of output between the three commonly considered regions of China: coastal, central and western regions. We find that there are strong spillovers from the coastal region to both other regions, from the central region to the western region, but that shocks to the western region have no flow-on effect on the other two regions. Thus, a policy of developing the coastal region is likely to indirectly benefit the other two regions. Our results suggest surprisingly little change in the pattern of spillovers over the period 1953–2003, although parameter instability in the beginning of the period limits the extent of possible analysis of this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at explaining substantial and persistent regional labour productivity differentials in Italy. First, the role played by the diversity of local economic structures is quantitatively assessed. Within-industry productivity levels are then related to regional endowments of physical and human capital per worker and to total factor productivity. Subsequently, an empirical evaluation of the influence exercised by a selected set of explanatory factors on regional total factor productivity (TFP) levels is performed. In this context, spatial econometrics techniques are employed to obtain inferences that are robust to the presence of spatial autocorrelation in the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]