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A Correction to this paper has been published: 10.1007/s12061-021-09378-3

This paper investigates the impact of the city’s urban spatial structure in shaping population density distribution over time. This research question is relevant in Barcelona because urban population grew at a sustained pace in various decades due to intense immigration inflows. When the urban spatial structure fails to behave as the backbone of population density distribution, population distribution can suffer from polarization problems. We conduct our empirical study using an urban monocentric framework, tracking the different spatial distribution patterns of the overall population and a few selected urban communities in light of the degree of attractiveness of the central business district (CBD). To this end, we construct an original database by each district in Barcelona from 1902 to 2011 and perform an econometric analysis. Our results reveal that the urban spatial structure continued to be a crucial determinant over time for shaping the overall population distribution in Barcelona and in almost all selected communities. However, its importance fluctuated over time, bottoming out in the 1950s–1960s, and whose resurgence was mostly driven by the political initiative to create a new centrality in the urban periphery. This policy reinforced the attractiveness of the CBD, resulting in the de-facto avoidance of urban polarization.

La convivencia a Barcelona entre habitants de diferents etnies genera segregacio per diferencia de renda; no per raons etniques. Aixi ho mostra l'analisi exhaustiva de l'estructura espacial urbana de la ciutat que han dut a terme investigadors del departament d'Economia Aplicada de la UAB. Aquests han determinat, d'una banda, el desplacament de grups amb un nivell adquisitiu baix cap a barris pobres, privats d'aconseguir una residencia a llocs d'interes encarits per la gentrificacio i, d'altra banda, l'educacio com a via esperancadora per introduir aquest sector en l'espai "vetat" per motius economics.

L’objectif de ce numero est d’analyser l’impact de la presence du secteur informel sur la structure urbaine des villes en Amerique latine ainsi que son influence sur deux facteurs cles pour le developpement. Un des aspects observes les plus tangibles concerne repercussion de la presence du secteur informel sur le marche immobilier et dont l'une des consequences directes en termes de structure urbaine est la concentration de la plupart des activites informelles dans les peripheries, son impact sur la structure urbaine ou les peripheries concentrent la plupart des activites informelles. Les articles selectionnes etudient les effets provoques par l'informalite, en commencant par examiner la forme la plus adequate pour la mesurer en mettent en evidence l’interaction entre marche formel et informel. Finalement, ils abordent un dernier aspect qui est l’influence de l’informalite locale sur la competitivite internationale des activites productives en tant que source de developpement economique.

In our study, we seek to identify the basic factors in citizens’ decisions to regularly use public transportation, especially the decision to ride a bus in Barcelona, Spain. Our survey reveals that, contrary to other recent results, income is not a statistically significant factor in those decisions, whereas level of education and occupation are. Moreover, the effects of congestion emerge as a key factor in the decision to ride the bus regularly. Considering congestion’s impact on the likelihood of regularly using the bus transport system, regular commuters in the urban area and riders with a high level of education are more responsive to reductions in congestion. Those findings contribute to an important discussion about implementing public policies that support citizens’ use of public transportation systems in urban areas.

Financial support from research projects 2009SGR-169, ECO2009-7616, and Consolider-Ingenio 2010 (Xavier Martinez-Giralt), 2009SGR-00600 and SEJ2008-01850/ECON (Rosella Nicoli) This paper discusses a novel argument to interpret the importance of thinking of collaborative partnerships in pre-competitive agreements. To do so, we adopt a dynamic iterative process to model technology diffusion between the partners of an agreement. We find that the success of an agreement of a given length hinges around identifying the suitable efficient combinations of the initial technological endowments of partners. As the time horizon of the agreement expands, the probability of identifying a suitable partner decreases, thus justifying the prevalence of short-horizon R&D agreements

We analyze the impact on wages of the adoption of a rent-sharing remuneration scheme aimed at making labor institutions more flexible. We work within a quasi-experimental setting referring to a sample of Italian companies before and after the introduction of the Treu Reform (1997). Our estimations confirm that this reform not only increased insider workers' wages via rent-sharing, but also fueled a σ−convergence process of the rent-sharing elasticity across the sectors at a different rate. Finally, we deliver a reasoned discussion of the consequences of implementing this reform on the Italian job market. This reform produced advances in the quality of job remuneration but it deepened a structural gap in the Italian labor market composition.

This study provides an empirical application of the Bayesian approach for modelling the evolution of population density distribution across time. It focuses on the case of Massachusetts by tracking changes in the importance of spatial distance from Boston concerning citizens' choices of residence according to data for 1880- 1890 and 1930-2010. By adopting a Bayesian strategy, results show that Boston reinforced its attractiveness until the 1960s, when the city's accessibility no longer represented the unique determinant of population density distribution. Referring to selected historical evidence, a few possible interpretations are presented to endorse these results. La modélisation de la densité de la population au fil du temps: l'importance de la distance spatiale. Regional Studies.

The effectiveness of local spatial dependence in shaping the population density distribution is investigated. Individual location preferences are modelled by considering the status-related features of a given spatial unit and its neighbours as well as local random spatial dependence. The novelty is framing such a dependence through conditionally autoregressive (CAR) census random effects that are added to a spatially lagged explanatory variable X (SLX) setting. The results not only confirm that controlling for the spatial dimension is relevant but also indicate that local spatial dependence warrants consideration when determining the population distribution of recent decades. In this respect, the framework turns out to be useful for the analysis of microdata in which individual relationships (in a same spatial unit) enforce local spatial dependence.

In a natural experiment, we observed that the influence of a norm depended upon the gender and cultural background of participants. Both gender and cultural background contributed to the effect of peer pressure that partly controlled against the act of cheating among participants as they completed a group task. Furthermore, both factors served to describe the characteristics of hardworking individuals in the group. We therefore conclude that the effectiveness of a norm in a group is expected to depend upon the presence of hardworking individuals therein.

The aim of this proposal is to present a teaching experiment that has been in use since the academic year 2012–2013. The experiment concerns the introduction of a norm to direct the self-assessment of individual participation in the making of group reports. The presence of this norm can limit potential free-riding or conflicts inside each team. Statistical results from more than 400 students who participated in this experiment confirm that this norm was effective in reducing misleading individual behavior. In addition, this effect turns out to be associated with the presence of women and/or students from abroad in each group.

We analyze the conditions driving the organization of the territory near airports by studying the distribution of economic activities. We consider how commercial firms, service operators, and consumers compete for land. The theoretical setting identifies an aerotropolis (airport city) as a land equilibrium outcome characterized by the following spatial sequence: services area, commercial area, residential area. Using data on the distribution of establishments in the United States, we analyze the existence and determinants of aeropolitan configurations. Estimations performed with parametric methods detect some interesting dynamic patterns affecting the density and distribution of activities around selected U.S. airports.

This study proposes an empirical analysis to assess the changes recorded by the urban gradient when population size suffers from an important and unexpected shock. To this end, we build an original pseudo-panel covering information for the city of Barcelona from 1902 to 2011. Despite the prediction of canonical theoretical models for monocentric cities, our results identify an increase in the size of the urban gradient due to the reinforcement of the attractiveness of the central business district (CBD) during the period of expansion of the population mostly led by the high-skill and immigrant communities.

This study proposes to investigate the effectiveness of modeling local spatial dependence through a conditionally autoregressive process (CAR) to picture the population distribution across space. Following the current literature, the idea is to model individual location preferences by focusing on a selected sample of location determinants but also taking into account spatial dependence in location choices. By exploiting a Bayesian setting, our novelty is to include spatial CAR census random effects that have been found to be effective in enhancing the role of spatial proximity. Our results indicate that to effectively control for the spatial dimension in location choices, one needs to define both a global indicator for space structure and local spatial dependence which has become increasingly important in recent decades.

This paper proposes an empirical analysis of the role of memory in determining the size of credits granted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) during 1991–2003. We first build an original database from information associated with the number and contract types granted by clients, after which we develop an empirical strategy for capturing the role of memory, namely by defining three different indicators to approximate each client’s reputation. These indicators rely on the client’s identity and, when available, information associated with previous EBRD-financed investment projects. With the fixed-effects estimation technique, our results unambiguously show that the value of the first investment project financed by the EBRD, as a proxy for reputation, is the most effective indicator for established clients to determine the size of the credits they receive to finance further investments.

This study discusses the experience of the implementation of a peer-norm in reducing free riding and conflict problems in teamwork activities. This exploratory experiment is run with two cohorts of students in one of the principal Spanish universities. The educational problem is to control for student potential collusion (with clear free riding episodes) in homework projects performed by assigned groups. The peer -norm intends to control for it. The empirical analysis identifies that the success of this norm is associated with the presence of foreign students. Empirically, the presence of foreign students in each cohort brings an educational and cultural background different from the native's one. Their presence in work -groups turns out to be the key factor to reduce potentially the degree of collusion in the overall cohort because they seem to be less concerned by the "social retaliation" of the mates.

The problem of Spanish productivity is a recurrent topic in economic literature. The importance of identifying the sources of productivity is even more relevant in the current economic landscape, because the Spanish economy is passing through important adjustments, after going through an intense period of huge immigration inflows. This aims of this paper include assessing the evolution of Spanish productivity, by providing a quantitative evaluation of current results with reference to potential ones. Considerable focus is also placed on identifying the determinants of the productivity changes which have been incurred in recent years by focusing on the role of the entry of immigrants into the local labour market. In this way, our results show that, in a few specific situations, immigrants play the role of environment-builders, encouraging the transition of firm strategies fostering productivity from the cost reduction side to the hiring of skilled labour.

We conduct an empirical analysis to assess the degree of segregation among the different communities in Barcelona taking into account the spatial dependence of the features associated with the neighbor’s status. We build an original database by gathering information for the period 1947–2011. Estimations emphasize that Barcelona increasingly shows a spatial-dependent segregation pattern based mostly on the gentrification of the high-skill workers rather than on the ethnicity of the different communities.

L’experiencia docent presentada en aquest estudi es porta realitzant des de el curs academic 2012-2013 a la Facultat d’Economia i Empresa (FEiE) de la Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB). S’ha implementat un mecanisme d’autoavaluacio per part dels estudiants quan duen a terme treballs en grup: es demana als estudiants la tramesa d’una declaracio conjunta on s’indica la participacio individual a la realitzacio del treball de grup. Aquest mecanisme es concreta amb la introduccio d’una norma que d’una banda serveix per a reduir els problemes de conflictivitat en la distribucio de tasques i d’altra banda proporciona al docent elements qualitatius per l’atribucio individual de la nota del treball de grup.

Working within a Bayesian parametric framework, we develop a novel approach to studying the distribution of regional population density across space. By exploiting the Gamma distribution, we are able to introduce heterogeneity across space without incurring an a priori definition of territorial units. Our contribution also permits the inclusion of an approximation of individual preferences as a further driving force in location choices. We perform an empirical application to the case of Massachusetts. Our results demonstrate that a subjective measure of distance performs well in replicating the population distribution across Massachusetts.

We investigate the potential effect of gender and cultural background in shaping individual behavior when agents are required to accomplish a task. Our results, which derive from a natural experiment, reveal that a combination of different social norms (linked to various types of cultural backgrounds) is fundamental to creating the peer pressure that helps to ensure that a group task is accomplished properly.

This study aims to investigate the extent to which history matters in shaping population distribution across space. In the wake of the current literature, the idea is to model individual location preferences by focusing on selected local determinants (neighborhood, education, income, amenities and distance from the CBD), while also taking into account temporal and spatial dependence in location choices. Our preliminary results revel the importance of segregation factors in shaping recent population density distribution.

This paper aims at analysing the importance of local determinants to foreign direct investment (FDI) in three European regional case studies. The originality of the approach lies in the use of disaggregated data by sector and by region. The results are three-fold. First, regional demand and productivity are fundamental FDI determinants, confirming most studies with national data. Second, regional FDI inflows are more dependent on regional than national determinants. Finally, the effect of market potential measured with absolute gross domestic product (GDP) on regional FDI diminishes linearly with distance and does not when measured with GDP per capita. © 2010 Taylor & Francis., Rosella Nicolini’s research is supported by a Ramón y Cajal contract. Financial support from grants 2005SRG00470 and SEJ2005- 01427/ECON is acknowledged.

En el actual plan de estudios figuran asignaturas bajo el epígrafe de Comercio internacional en el segundo ciclo, y Economía mundial (internacional) en el primer año del primer ciclo. Existen manuales de referencia que proporcionan un temario muy completo, pero, a veces, con pocos ejemplos y aplicaciones prácticas. Mi propuesta docente es ofrecer un programa en el que se complementen los conceptos teóricos con cuestiones más aplicadas que giren entorno a las políticas económicas referidas a la integración Europea. Adicionalmente cabe destacar que las aportaciones son más evidentes e impactantes a la hora de abordar las teorías del comercio internacional bajo condiciones de competencia imperfecta.International Commerce and Economic Policies of the European Union. Practical Contributions

This theoretical model investigates the extent of the effects of local technological spillovers on growth. We add to a growth model with vertical quality ladder innovations the assumption that firms are exogenously located around a circle and technological spillovers affecting R&D efficacy occur between neighbors. As a result, the presence of local spillovers makes it optimal for a firm to innovate intensively only if the neighbors do so. However, they do not produce clear effects on either growth or welfare. On one hand positive spillovers improve the quality of local goods—hence growth—but, on the other, a high level of positive spillovers generate discrepancies across intermediate sectors which reduce the level of household welfare.

25 páginas, 3 figuras, 5 tablas., This paper proposes to investigate the effect of spillovers on firms’ R&D investment decisions. We develop an analysis merging the geographer’s toolbox with standard econometric techniques. For a chosen sample of sectors, we test the existence of positive spatial autocorrelation at the level of R&D investments. We provide results on how far the local environment may influence the firms’ investment decisions, hence to what extent localization economies matter for agglomera-tion. Data confirm that the proximity to other firms investing in R&D may produce positive externalities. Finally, the diversity versus specialization debate is tackled., The second author research is supported by Ramón y Cajal contract of the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and by Barcelona Economics Program of CREA.

This article proposes an empirical investigation of regional trade flows following a cross-section method. For this purpose, the author refers to a regional context looking at a chosen sample of European regions. She mainly intends to assess the role of the home market effect and the level of transport costs in driving regional export flows. In particular, she is interested in testing the importance of spatial components in regional trade analysis. By simply adapting the gravity model approach to her framework, she is able to prove that physical distance smooths the intensity of trading flows while local transport facilities as well as local demand foster them.

The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the role of local industrial networks in regional development processes. A one-region model is built with which to investigate the conditions under which local networks arise, distinguishing between spontaneous and supported networks. Taking into account the difference between incomplete and fully coordinated agreements among firms, I establish the values of parameters that allow for the rise of each type of network. Finally, I discuss the positive effects that local networks yield to the regional internal product, making them a reliable support for regional economic take-off.

This study discusses the experience of the implementation of a peer-norm in reducing conflicts in teamwork. This field experiment is run with two cohorts of students coursing external trade. I investigate on student potential collusion in homework projects performed by assigned groups. The empirical analysis identifies that the success of this norm is associated with the presence of foreign students as a key factor for the achievement of a separating-type equilibrium.

The aim of this paper is to propose an econometric application in order to detect the factors that affect the size and the performance of local clusters of small and medium firms (SMEs) such as industrial districts. Our purpose is to extend some basic issues of models in economic geography in order to account for further micro components that seem fostering the rise and performances of local clusters. We succeed in stating that, in addition to the home market effect and transport costs, firms belonging to industrial districts improve their competitiveness by exploiting some assets, such those involved by ad-hoc services, generated inside the district by the co-operation among firms. Moreover looking for fixed effects in the study of firms' competitiveness allows us to determine that sectorial differences do not affect substantially the behavior and performance of SMEs.

In this paper, we analyse the geographic concentration of economic activities within the framework of a two countries and four regions model. Trade both between regions and countries entails transport costs which are differentiated according to the interregional or international nature of the flows. Allowing for regional migration of the population, the model configures the equilibra of this systems as key parameters change. The results obtained suggest that both types of transaction costs affect the incentive for firms to cluster geographically. Consequently, processes of integration between nations such as the one taking place through the constitution of the European Union is identified as a factor possibly favoring the emergence of regional economic agglomeration.

This study aims at assessing the evolution of the importance of spatial distance in citizens' location choices across time. We focus on the case of population distribution in Massachusetts. We handle a database including data for the years 1880-1890 and 1930-2010. By adopting a Bayesian strategy, we are able to state that Boston reinforced its attractiveness up to the 1960s, but since then Boston's attractiveness has no longer represented the unique determinant of population distribution. Referring to selected historical evidence, we put forward a few possible interpretations to endorse our results.

This paper analyzes the conditions driving the organization of the territory near airports by studying the distribution of economic activities. We consider how commercial firms, service operators, and consumers compete for land. The theoretical setting provides a grid of possible spatial structures in accordance with the degree of competition among agents. An aerotropolis (airport city) appears when the spatial sequence services area - commercial area - residential area arises as the land equilibrium outcome. Using data on the distribution of establishments in the United States (US), we analyze the existence and determinants of aeropolitan configurations. Estimations performed with parametric methods detect some interesting dynamic patterns affecting the density and distribution of activities around selected US airports.

In this paper, we analyze the wage effects of the adoption of a labor reform aiming at making labor institutions more flexible. We are working with a quasi-experimental setting referring to a sample of Italian companies before and after the introduction of the Treu Reform (1997). Our IV-estimations confirm that this reform not only increased workers’ wages via rent sharing, but also fuelled a convergence process of the elasticity between rent sharing and wages across the sectors.

This paper proposes an empirical analysis for asessing the extent to which multinational firms can effectively support market creation strategies. Our setting focuses on the transition countries, namely ex-socialist countries. Focusing on the lending policy of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), we build an original database by organizing the public records of the credit contracts signed by the EBRD. Our empirical strategy is able to disentangle that the credit selection that favored the entry of foreign multinational corporations into these countries served as one of the pillars for consolidating their transition to the market economy.

This study investigates the existence of hiring criteria associated with the degree of social connections between skill and low-skill workers. We provide evidence about to what extent managers rely on their social connections in recruiting low-skill workers rather than on random matching. As one unique feature we follow an approach for a posted wage setting that reflects the main features of the Spanish labor market. By working with sub-samples of high and low-skill workers we are able to assess that the recruitment of low-skill immigrants quite often follows a referral strategy and we identify interesting irregularities across the ethnic groups. As a common feature, referral hiring is usually influences by the ethnicity of the manager and the relative proportion of immigrants within the firm. Under these perspectives, our study outlines new insights to evaluate the future perspectives of the Spanish labor market.

This paper focuses on the financing strategy adopted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in the period 1991-2003. We propose a simple empirical method to isolate the most effective screening device for contracts granted under conditions of asymmetric information. In line with the predictions of the contract theory, the role of memory is dominant. By exploiting the information about the number and type of contracts by client, we test different indicators to approximate the client's reputation. Our results unambiguously isolate the value of the first-investment project financed by the EBRD as the most effective screening device among the established clients.

The institutional purpose of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is to foster the transition towards open market-oriented economics. This paper investigates the lending policy of the bank (during the period 1991-2003) as a practical device to achieve the previous target. By building up an original database based on the public records of the contracts signed by the EBRD, we are able to isolate a clear strategy: the entry of foreign multinational corporations into transition countries serves as a pillar to consolidate the creation of the market system. This result is achieved by empirically analyzing the determinants of the credit granted to a group of local and foreign borrowers.

This paper develops a novel approach studying the distribution of the regional population density across space. We work in a Bayesian parametric framework. Exploiting the Gamma distribution, we are able to introduce heterogeneity across space without incurring any a priori definition of territorial units. Our contribution also allows the inclusion of an approximation of individual preferences as a further driving force in location choices. We perform an empirical application to the case of Massachusetts. Our results assess that a subjective measure of distance performs quite well in replicating the population distribution across Massachusetts.

This paper examines the conditions allowing the formation of aeropolitan areas as large industrial areas with a high concentration of commercial activities in the proximity of selected airports. We assume that firms deliver their production by plane and land competition takes place among service operators, firms and farmers. Service operators supply facilities that firms can absorb. Our framework identifies a unique land equilibrium characterized by the spatial sequence Airport - Industrial park - Rural area (A-I-R). Aerotropolis-type configurations are associated with the level of transport costs and the degree of intensity of facilities. Keywords: aerotropolis; facilities; bid-rent function. JEL Classification Numbers: L29; L90; R14.

The purpose of this contribution is to draw a picture of the (uneven) distribution of economic activities across the states of the European Union (EU) and the consequences entailed by it. We will briefly summarize the most salient and recent contributions. Then, in the light of the economic geography theory, we will discuss the economic and social advantages and disadvantages associated with a core– periphery structure. In this sense, particular attention will be addressed to the EU financial system of Structural Funds and the effects they produced. Finally, we will formulate some suggestions, relying on the EU experience, that could be of interest to the current Brazilian regional policy.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the financing strategy adopted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in the period 1991-2003. We propose a simple empirical method to isolate the most effective screening device for contracts granted under conditions of asymmetric information. In line with the predictions of the contract theory, the role of memory is dominant. By exploiting the information about the number and type of contracts by client, we approximate the client's reputation. Our results unambiguously isolate the dominant effect of memory on the bank's lending decisions over market factors in the case of established clients.

RESUMEN En este estudio ofrecemos, utilizando un modelo de economía geográfica, un análisis teórico y empírico de los elementos que afectan a la demanda turística en la Comunidad Valenciana. Nuestro análisis se propone combinar ideas desarrolladas en el contexto de la geografía económica con las técnicas de la economía geográfica. De esta manera elaboramos un modelo teórico general para analizar la formación de la demanda turística. Además, del análisis empírico del caso valenciano, se obtiene que la elasticidad de la demanda turística (pernoctaciones en hoteles) con respecto a los servicios ofrecidos es positiva y altamente significativa, mientras que no resulta afectada por el número de restaurantes. ABSTRACT This paper aims at proposing a theoretical and empirical analysis of the factors affecting the touristic demand in Comunidad Valenciana by exploiting the theoretical framework developed in economic geography. Our analysis combines the ideas belonging to the geographical economy with the techniques of the economic geography. In such a way, we propose a theoretical framework in order to study the formation of the touristic demand. The econometric exercise suggests that the elasticity of the touristic demand is positive and very significant with respect to the quality of the touristic services, but it is not affected by the number of restaurants.

The present paper aims at analyzing the sources of productivity in Europe to account for its recent underperformance and identify potential geographic idiosyncracies. We study the productivity performance and its sources in a sample of ten European regions belonging to four countries (France, Germany, Italy and Spain). Exploiting the increasing availability of disaggregated data at regional level in Europe, we propose both a descriptive statistics and an econometric analysis of productivity sources since 1995. Our main finding is that the sources of labor productivity are rather heterogeneous across our sample but may be associated with regional or national idiosyncracies.

This paper examines the conditions allowing for the formation of aeropolitan areas as large industrial areas with a high concentration of commercial activities in the proximity of cargo airports. When firms deliver part of their production by plane, land competition takes place among service operators, firms and farmers. Service operators supply facilities that firms can take advantage of. Our framework allows selecting a stable land equilibrium: the spatial sequence Airport-Industrial Park-Rural Area (A-I-R). Aerotropolis-type configurations arise around cargo airports when there is an intense use of the airport by the firms and a sufficiently high level of facilities.

This study aims at analyzing the determinants of foreign direct investment inflows for a group of European regions. The originality of this approach lies in the use of disaggregated regional data. First, we develop a qualitative description of our database and discuss the importance of the macroeconomic determinants in attracting FDI. Then, we provide an econometric exercise to identify the potential determinants of FDI inflows. In spite of choosing regions presenting economic similarities, we show that regional FDI inflows rely on a combination of factors that differs from one region to another.

This paper aims at developing a theoretical and empirical analysis of the factors affecting the demand of the tourist sector in the Comunidad Valenciana. We develop a study in line with the approach of the economic geography theory. Firms belonging to the tourist sector concentrate around natural resources and make spontaneous agglomerations arise. The activities sponsored by the Agencia de Turismo allow firms to improve the quality of the touristic offer and generate competitive advantages for the firms themselves. The econometric results suggest that the elasticity of the touristic demand is positive and very significant with respect to the quality of the touristic offer. Moreover, as one can expect, transport costs and other barriers smooth the touristic demand. En este estudio nos proponemos, utilizando un modelo de economía geográfica, ofrecer un análisis teórico y empírico de los elementos que afectan a la demanda turística en la Comunidad Valenciana, siendo este un sector en el que las empresas se distribuyen de manera polarizada alrededor de los recursos naturales. Las actividades patrocinadas por la Agencia Valenciana de Turismo han permitido incrementar la calidad de los servicios ofrecidos, sobre todo para las empresas que forman parte de una aglomeración, puesto que esta circunstancia les permite disfrutar de ventajas competitivas. Además, del análisis empírico se obtiene que la elasticidad de la demanda turística (pernoctaciones en hoteles) con respecto a los servicios ofrecidos es positiva y altamente significativa, mientras que no resulta afectada por el número de restaurantes. Por otra parte, y como cabría esperar, los costes de transporte parecen ser una restricción importante para los turistas extranjeros. Algunas consideraciones de política económica concluyen este estudio.