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This editorial summarises the papers published in issue 13.1 so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper adopts a scale neutral approach to investigate the spatial mechanisms that cause regional innovation and growth. The second paper claims that population-weighting when calculating indices of regional inequality might lead to inconsistent outcomes. The third paper estimates the effect of distance between family residence and higher education institution on a student's academic performance, thereby accounting for endogenous regressors. The fourth paper shows an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic development at region of origin and the propensity to migrate using a multilevel approach. The fifth paper provides spatial econometric evidence of price competition between sellers of used books on Amazon.com. The last paper estimates a hedonic housing price equation and parameterizes the spatial weight matrix to determine how far back in time buyers, sellers and realtors are looking at the housing market.

Regional employment growth has become an area of increasing interest to academics and policymakers alike over recent years. To date little empirical research has been undertaken in regards to the relationship between economic diversity and regional employment growth with even less research considering the potential for regional spillovers. This paper analyses this gap in the existing literature by considering the roles of three categories of diversity (total, related and unrelated) on Irish employment growth over the period 2006–2012. Utilising a spatial econometric model we note not only the positive effect of spatial spillovers in regards to employment growth, but also the differing impacts of all three measures. Our results indicate that for this particular period a diverse industry structure has a significant positive impact on employment growth. We find that total diversity and its two sub-components related and unrelated diversity positively effects employment growth. Unrelated diversity is found to have the largest positive effect.

Today, firms are faced with a number of environmental challenges, such as global warming, pollution control and declining natural resources. While there is increasing pressure to deliver environmentally friendly products and services, little is known about what drives the many different types of environmental innovation, or how such pursuits' impact firm performance. Using a sample of 2181 firms, this paper examines the factors that drive nine different types of eco-innovation in Ireland, and assesses how such innovations impact firm performance. We find that, while demand-side, supply-side and regulatory drivers impact on the likelihood of a firm engaging in eco-innovation, the relative magnitudes of these impacts vary across the types of eco-innovation considered. Moreover, we find that only two of the nine types of eco-innovation positively impact firm performance. The results point to regulation and customer pressure as viable mechanisms through which firms can be encouraged to eco-innovate. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

In this paper we empirically analyse the innovation returns to firms which engage in nanotechnology research. Using propensity score matching we match firms which engage in nanotechnology research with statistically similar firms which do not. This allows us to assess whether there is a difference in their respective innovative output. We note that firms which engage in nanotechnology research have higher levels of turnover derived from newly innovative goods and services than firms which do not engage in nanotechnology research after controlling for differences in R&D intensity, openness to external agents and other firm specific characteristics. This suggests that firms which engage in nanotechnology research may gain an innovation premium over similar firms which do not engage in this specific form of research.

This paper analyses the knowledge sourcing, transformation, and exploitation stages of the innovation value chain for a sample of Irish small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) using Community Innovation Survey data. It explores the role of internal research and development (R&D) and external knowledge on SMEs’ innovation and performance. The open innovation paradigm, which stresses the importance of external linkages, is used to examine the impact of different external knowledge sources on SMEs’ innovation. The consideration of external linkages in the innovation performance of SMEs is crucial as these firms may be constrained in their ability to perform R&D due to their size. The analysis expands the traditional CDM methodology beyond the consideration of research and development as the sole source of knowledge for innovation by also considering a range of potential external knowledge sources. The findings indicate that SMEs generate knowledge internally through the performance of R&D, while also exploiting linkages to external agents. However, the impact of external sources of knowledge is not uniform. The results suggest that backward linkages have a positive impact on SME product innovation, but negatively affect SME process innovation, while public knowledge sources are positively related to the probability of product innovation occurring. This may have important policy implications. Finally, process innovation is also found to be a key determinant of SME productivity, while product innovation has no impact on SME performance.

The response by regional and national economies to exogenous impulses has a well-established literature in both spatial econometrics and in mainstream econometrics and is of considerable importance given the current economic crisis. This paper focuses on dynamic counterfactual predictions and impulse-response functions to provide insight regarding the question of whether responses to economic shocks are transitory or permanent. Analysis shows that output shocks have permanent effects on productivity with economies adjusting to new levels following a shock. This suggests that the current recession will be embodied permanently within the memory of some of Europe's leading economies as a hysteretic effect.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse income inequality for a sample of 14 European countries and their composite regions using data from the Cambridge Econometrics regional dataset from 1980 to 2009. The purpose of the paper is to provide insight into the dynamics of regional and national cohesion among the EU‐14 countries studied.Design/methodology/approachInitially, inequality is decomposed using the Theil coefficient into between and within country inequality to assess the extent to which convergence has occurred. To investigate the underlying causes of the changes in inequality, the Theil coefficient is further decomposed to assess the contribution of productivity and employment‐population ratio differentials to inequality.FindingsThe results indicate that while between‐country inequality has declined, within‐country inequality has increased by approximately 50 percent. Subsequent decomposition indicates that while productivity levels among regions have converged, the employment‐population ratios have diverged substantially driving increasing levels of inequality. This suggests that while EU cohesion policies have reduced productivity inequalities they have had little effect in stimulating convergence of employment‐population ratios across regions.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper argues that national priorities, particularly in the context of the current European economic crisis, are likely to hinder European Union level policies to reduce income inequality at a regional level. This may result in further increases in regional inequality among European regions.Originality/valueThis paper's main contribution is to highlight how national convergence can lead to regional divergence being overlooked. The value of the paper is that it provides policy insights, based on empirical evidence, for European cohesion policy.

In this paper, we use a partial adjustment model to analyse the relationship between employment and population growth in Irish district electoral divisions. We employ a spatial estimator to augment our partial adjustment model with a spatial lag and spatial error process. Our results indicate a dual relationship between employment and population growth, suggesting that not only do people follow jobs but also jobs follow people. This finding has implications for economic development policies, which typically focus solely on attracting jobs to a location. The results suggest that a dual-pronged approach to policy may be necessary including developing a region’s amenities to ensure that it is attractive to people and to stimulate population growth. We highlight how our analysis can be used to inform policy through the lenses of place-based and smart specialisation strategies.

PurposeRecent reports argue that eco‐innovation is the key to realising growth. The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors which drive eco‐innovation and test if eco‐innovating firms perform better than non‐eco‐innovating firms. The paper provides insights into the role government regulation can play in directing and stimulating eco‐innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe approach utilised by this paper is empirical in nature. Using a sample of 2,181 firms, gathered as part of the Irish Community Survey 2006‐2008, the authors estimate a modified innovation production function in order to assess the impact of regulation, consumer expectations and voluntary agreements on the performance of eco‐innovation, subsequently a knowledge augmented production function is estimated to assess the impact of eco‐innovation on firm performance.FindingsThe findings suggest that regulation and customer perception can explain a firm's decision to engage in eco‐innovation. Eco‐innovation is also found to be more important than non‐eco‐innovation in determining firm performance.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the limited availability of accounting data this paper uses turnover per worker as the measure of firm performance. As a result, it is not possible to assess the impact of eco‐innovation on firm costs.Social implicationsThe finding that regulation drives eco‐innovation, and that there is no trade‐off between eco‐innovation and higher profit margins for innovating firms, suggests that regulators and policy makers can stimulate growth and create a greener society.Originality/valueThis paper provides an empirical analysis of the Porter and van der Linde's theory of environmental regulation and firm performance using novel real world data from over 2,000 Irish businesses.

This paper analyses the importance of decisions to interact nationally and internationally for the likelihood of process and product innovation in a sample of Irish firms. The key contribution is to provide an empirical test of the relative importance of geographically proximate versus distant interaction, using a two-step procedure to remove potential endogeneity in interaction decisions. In doing so it finds that only national and only international interaction have the expected positive effects on the probability of innovation, while engaging in both national and international interaction has no effect. The findings support hypotheses on the importance of both geographically proximate and distant interaction for innovation, though the lack of significance for both national and international interaction means there is no evidence to support the proposition that these forms of interaction are complementary.

Background Mania/hypomania is the hallmark feature of bipolar disorder. This paper aims to review the current evidence in relation to factors hypothesised to precipitate bipolar mania/hypomania, and suggest areas for future research. Methods A selective review of original and review papers was conducted. The electronic databases ‘PsycINFO’ and ‘PubMed’ were searched using the following search strings: “bipolar disorder” or “mania” or “hypomania” or “manic-depression” with “triggers” or “precipitants” or “precedents” or “predictors”. Results There is evidence that goal attainment events, antidepressant medication, disrupted circadian rhythms, spring/summer seasonal conditions, and more tentatively, stressful life events and high emotional expression, may precipitate bipolar mania/hypomania in susceptible individuals. Evidence from case reports and clinical observations are also reported. Discussion The pathways to bipolar mania/hypomania may be many and varied, and many of these pathways may be outside the awareness of individuals with bipolar disorder. Greater awareness of the broad number of precipitating factors is needed to inform self-management and psycho-educational programs to build resilience to further episodes. Future research is needed to explore what other factors may precipitate bipolar mania/hypomania, and to determine why some factors may precipitate mania/hypomania in some individuals with bipolar I or II disorder but not in others.

Using firm level data from the Irish Community Innovation Survey 2008–2010 we analyse the importance of eight skill sets for the innovation performance of firms. We distinguish between radical and incremental innovation. Our results suggest that there is substantial heterogeneity in the importance of skills for different types of innovation and that some skills are best sourced from outside the firm while others are best developed in-house.

Objectives:Despite increasing evidence supportive of the effectiveness of coaching there are no studies which demonstrate that the benefits flow on to improvements in objective performance as assessed by evaluators blind to participation in the coaching. This study examined the efficacy of two coaching programmes on independently assessed performance.Design:A double-blind random control trial in which participants were randomly allocated to either a Preparation, Action, Adaptive Learning (PAAL), or a self-regulation co-coaching programme with blind assessment of subsequent academic performance. A third no-treatment condition was used for additional comparison and control of expectancy effects.Methods:Two structurally identical seven-week co-coaching programmes were run. The Self-regulation condition focused on the development of study and coping skills, whilst the PAAL condition additionally focused on preparation for change and adaptive learning. Fifty-two volunteer first-year university students were randomly assigned to either a PAAL (N=27) or Self-regulation (N=25) co-coaching programme. Participants completed self-report pre- and post-measures of academic self-efficacy, decisional balance, resilience, hope, self-compassion and belief in the incremental theory of change. Academic results for the two coaching conditions were compared with 2103 first-year students who did not participate in the programme.Results:Participants in both coaching conditions reported significant improvements in self-efficacy and resilience, but only those in the PAAL condition experienced significant increases in decisional balance, hope, self-compassion and belief in the incremental theory of change. Participants in the PAAL condition experienced significantly greater increases in six of the seven dependent variables than participants in the Self-regulation condition. Relative to the no treatment control group, PAAL participants performed 10 per cent better in independently assessed academic performance (71.45 per cent vs. 61.59 per cent) (p=.0003, d=.61), however, those in the Self-regulation coaching condition only performed two per cent better (63.32 per cent vs. 61.59 per cent) (p=.604, d=.11). Across all the dependent variables the average effect size for the PAAL condition was d=.93, while the Self-regulation condition averaged d=.43.Conclusion:Both co-coaching conditions produced significant increases in self-efficacy and resilience, however, only those in the PAAL condition performed significantly better on decisional balance, hope, self-compassion, the incremental theory of change, and independently assessed academic performance. To ensure generalisation, future evaluation studies of coaching should seek to also evaluate variables which are theoretically related to the change process as well as independently assessed objective changes in performance.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse differences in the drivers of firm innovation performance across sectors. The literature often makes the assumption that firms in different sectors differ in their propensity to innovate but not in the drivers of innovation. The authors empirically assess whether this assumption is accurate through a series of econometric estimations and tests. Design/methodology/approach The data used are derived from the Irish Community Innovation Survey 2004-2006. A series of multivariate probit models are estimated and the resulting coefficients are tested for parameter stability across sectors using likelihood ratio tests. Findings The results indicate that there is a strong degree of heterogeneity in the drivers of innovation across sectors. The determinants of process, organisational, new to firm and new to market innovation varies across sectors suggesting that the pooling of sectors in an innovation production function may lead to biased inferences. Research limitations/implications The implications of the results are that innovation policies targeted at stimulating innovation need to be tailored to particular industries. One size fits all policies would seem inappropriate given the large degree of heterogeneity observed across the drivers of innovation in different sectors. Originality/value The value of this paper is that it provides an empirical test as to whether it is suitable to group sectoral data when estimating innovation production functions. Most papers simply include sectoral dummies, implying that only the propensity to innovate differs across sectors and that the slope of the coefficient estimates are in fact consistent across sectors.

Doran J. and Fingleton B. Employment resilience in Europe and the 2008 economic crisis: insights from micro-level data, Regional Studies. This paper analyses employment resilience to the 2008 economic crisis using individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS) combined with NUTS-1 regional economic statistics. It models employment outcomes for individuals for 2002–08 and generates counterfactual outcomes for 2010 for individual-level employment assuming there is no recession. A resilience index, based on the difference between employment outcomes assuming actual economic conditions and a no recession counterfactual, is generated. Resilience varies substantially and is higher in German and French regions than in peripheral regions. Highly educated individuals, middle-aged individuals, unionized workers and men are more resilient.

Perhaps uniquely, we combine individual-level data from the American Community Survey 2005–2011 with aggregate data for small areas to examine the resilience of individuals’ wages to the 2008 economic crisis. A Mincer-type wage equation, incorporating market potential and employment density, is estimated, leading to a measure of resilience based on actual wages in 2011 and on a counterfactual obtained from our wage equation. We find that individuals living in areas with a higher level of market potential are more resilient, controlling for individual-level characteristics such as education and ethnicity, indicating that both individual-specific and place-specific factors are important.

This paper analyses differences across sectors in firms’ propensity to innovate and the relative importance of inputs to innovation classifying firms into four broad sectors. The propensity and drivers of four types of innovation (new to firm, new to market, process and organisational) within these sectors are then analysed. The results indicate that, for new to firm and new to market innovation, there is a strong degree of heterogeneity in the drivers of innovation across sectors. The propensity to introduce process or organisational innovations varies slightly across sectors but that there is no evidence of differences across sectors in the drivers of innovation. These results have important implications for policy instruments to meet the needs of targeted firms.

This paper tests whether more frequent interaction at different spatial levels has a positive effect on the innovation performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the South-West and South-East of Ireland. Based on an original survey, it finds that more frequent interaction generally increases innovation likelihood, but at a diminishing rate, thus suggesting a trade-off between resources dedicated to transforming knowledge into new products and processes. Spatially distant interaction is found to be at least as valuable as proximate interaction, which questions the received wisdom that the best sources of knowledge are regional. Given the value of distant interaction, the results indicate that regional lock-in may be an obstacle to superior innovation performance of SMEs.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of a declining birth rate and an increasing old age‐population ratio on Ireland's economic output.Design/methodology/approachThis paper utilises data on the birth rate, old‐age population ratio, economic output and labour effort of the Irish economy to estimate a vector‐autoregressive model. The results of this model are then analysed to test for the presence of Granger causality among these variables. In doing so it is possible to assess whether there are statistically significant causal relationships existing among these factors. Subsequently, impulse response functions are derived from this model in order to assess the magnitude of the causal relationships.FindingsThe results suggest that declining fertility rates and increases in the old‐age dependency ratio have a significant impact on labour effort and economic output. Labour effort is also found to explain variation in the fertility rate and economic output. Economic output is found to effect labour effort and the fertility rate.Social implicationsThe results derived in this paper raise interesting policy implications. It is evident that Ireland's declining birth rate and increasing old‐age population ratio are creating a demographic situation which will have implications for future economic growth. Policies need to be put in place to mitigate the negative effects these factors will have on Irish growth.Originality/valueThis paper adopts modern econometric techniques to assess the causal relationships which exist between the demographic and economic factors considered. These have not previously been applied to the Irish situation. In doing this, this paper provides an important insight into the changing dynamics of the Irish economy.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical analysis of whether differing forms of innovation act as complements or substitutes in Irish firms’ production functions. Design/methodology/approach – The approach adopted by this paper is empirical in nature. Data are obtained for approximately 582 firms from the Irish Community Innovation Survey 2004-2006. In total, four forms of innovation activity are identified: new to firm product, new to market product, process and organisational innovation. Formal tests for complementarity and substitutability are applied to these types of innovation to assess whether they have a complementary effect on firms’ turnover. Findings – The results suggest that there is a substantial degree of complementarity among different forms of innovation. Out of six possible innovation combinations, three are complementary while none exhibits signs of substitutability. Social implications – From a business perspective, the importance of organisational change to facilitate technological innovation is highlighted, while from a policy perspective the importance of the incentivisation of organisation and process innovation is also highlighted. Originality/value – To date, most research has focused on the impact of various forms of innovation, in isolation, on firms’ productivity. They do not consider whether these forms of innovation may in fact be linked, and that by implementing two or more innovations simultaneously, the combined benefits may be greater than the sum of the parts.

Early intervention significantly decreases the impact of bipolar disorder. However, there is little research investigating triggers that may be unique precipitants of manic/hypomanic episodes, and how these may differ from triggers specific to bipolar depression, in young adults with the disorder.Individuals aged 18 to 30 years who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder (n=198) completed an online survey to identify triggers unique to mania/hypomania and depression, as well as triggers which were common to both. Respondents rated how frequently a series of situations and behaviours had precipitated either a manic/hypomanic episode or a depressive episode in the past. Survey data was supplemented by in-depth face-to-face interviews (n=11).Triggers specifically associated with the onset of manic/hypomanic episodes included falling in love, recreational stimulant use, starting a creative project, late night partying, going on vacation and listening to loud music. Triggers associated with depressive episodes included stressful life events, general stress, fatigue, sleep deprivation, physical injury or illness, menstruation and decreases in physical exercise. A further set of triggers were identified as being common to both manic/hypomanic and depressive episodes. Consistent themes arose from the analysis of face-to-face interviews, which extended and illuminated the findings of the survey data.Identification of a unique set of triggers for mania/hypomania and a unique set for depression in young adults with bipolar disorder may allow for earlier identification of episodes, thus increasing opportunities for early intervention.

This paper analyses the innovation value chain for the Irish Community Innovation Survey (CIS): 2004–2006. In estimating innovation and productivity simultaneously, it extends the CDM methodology to include a range of external knowledge sources. Feedback effects are found to be vital, with more productive firms being more innovative and vice versa. External knowledge sources affect the innovation decision but not innovation performance, thus pointing to the primacy of internal processes for the crucial task of knowledge exploitation. There is evidence of dichotomous knowledge sourcing in Ireland, with some firms sourcing from market and others, especially high-technology businesses, from non-market agents. External interaction, innovation et productivite exterieure: une application de la chaine de valeur de l'innovation a l'Irlande La presente communication analyse la chaine de valeur d'innovation pour le CIS : 2004–2006 irlandais. En estimant l'innovation et la productivite simultanement, elle p...