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This paper estimates the impact of public investment on regional economic growth and convergence at the NUTS 3 level in Greece. Using a new database of public expenditure per region for the period 1978-2007, it proposes a model which captures not just the impact of public investment in Greek prefectures, but also the spillover effects related to the existence of externalities from neighbouring regions. The results point to a positive long-run impact of public investment per capita on regional economic growth - but not on convergence - which also generates considerable spillover effects. However, the returns vary according to different types of public investment, with education and infrastructure spillovers having the highest impact. In general, public investment externalities seem to be more relevant for regional growth than direct public investment in each region. Finally, the impact of different types of public investment in Greece is mediated by politics and political factors, but the effect of politics disappears once we control for political-period-specific spatial-invariant variables. Resumen Este artículo estima el impacto de la inversión pública en el crecimiento económico regional y la convergencia a nivel NUTS 3 en Grecia. Haciendo uso de una nueva base de datos de gasto público por región para el periodo 1978-2007, se propone un modelo que identifica no solamente el impacto de la inversión pública en las prefecturas griegas, sino también los efectos de spillover relacionados con la existencia de externalidades procedentes de regiones vecinas. Los resultados apuntan a un impacto positivo a largo plazo de la inversión pública per cápita en el crecimiento económico regional - pero no en la convergencia - el cual genera unos efectos de spillover considerables. Sin embargo, los retornos varían de acuerdo con los diferentes tipos de inversión pública, siendo la educación y los spillovers de infraestructura los de mayor impacto. En general, las externalidades de inversión pública parecen tener una mayor relevancia para el crecimiento regional que la inversión pública directa en cada región. Para terminar, el impacto de los diferentes tipos de inversión pública en Grecia se ve influido por sus políticas y otros factores políticos, pero el efecto de las políticas desaparece una vez que se controlan las variables espacialmente-invariantes de tipo político ligadas a un periodo específico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic growth is an important priority for many local governments. There is a long-standing theoretical debate on how to best organize government for economic growth. There is surprisingly little empirical research focusing on how government organization affects regional growth. In this paper we forward several recent measures of government fragmentation in contrast to the common measure of government units per capita to examine how government competition influences growth, testing them in a metropolitan statistics area (MSA) growth model for 1992−2002. Going somewhat against the current embrace of regional collaboration, our results suggest that regions with relatively fragmented governments had stronger relative economic performance over the study's time frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare a set of econometric studies that measure the effect of net internal migration in neoclassical models of long-run real income convergence and derive 67 comparable effect sizes. The precision-weighted estimate of beta convergence is about 2.7 per cent. An increase of one percentage point in the net migration rate of a region increases the per capita income growth rate in that region on average by about 0.1 percentage points. Introducing a net migration variable in a growth regression increases the estimate of beta convergence slightly. Studies that use panel models or IV estimation methods yield smaller coefficients of net migration in growth regressions, while the opposite holds for regressions controlling for high-skilled migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study develops an economic growth model with residential distribution. The model synthesises the main ideas in the Solow-Uzawa growth model, the Alonso urban model, and the Muth housing model with perfect competition in all the markets, by proposing an alternative approach to household behaviour. We show that economic growth with the economic geography is governed by a single differential equation and analyse dynamic behaviour of the model. For explanation, we simulate the model over time and space. Resumen. Este estudio desarrolla un modelo de crecimiento económico con distribución residencial. El modelo sintetiza las ideas principales del modelo de crecimiento de Solow-Uzawa, el modelo urbano de Alonso, y el modelo de vivienda de Muth con una competencia perfecta en todos los mercados, por medio de proponer un enfoque alternativo al comportamiento de hogares. Mostramos que el crecimiento económico con la geografía económica está gobernado por una única ecuación diferencial y analizamos el comportamiento dinámico del modelo. A modo de explicación, realizamos una simulación del modelo en el tiempo y en el espacio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an overview of the recent development in the new economic geography (NEG), and discusses possible directions of its future development. Since several surveys on this topic already exist, we focus on the selected features of NEG which are important yet have attracted insufficient attention, and also on the recent refinements and extensions of the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]