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A key factor for a stable and solid development is the gain in labor productivity. The regions that manage to pull out of poverty and improve the living standards of their inhabitants, in fact, need to be able to diversify away from agriculture and other traditional sectors. In doing this, the speed with which labour and other resources move to modern economic activities is the key factor that differentiates successful regions from unsuccessful ones. In the paper productivity growth is decomposed in two parts: the ?within? and the ?structural? variation. The first denotes the variation of productivity due exclusively to a change inside individual sectors (employment is kept unaltered) while the second term captures the productivity effect of labour reallocations across different sectors. It is essentially the inner product of productivity levels (at the end of the time period) with the change in employment shares across sectors. When changes in employment shares are positively correlated with productivity levels, this term will be positive, and structural change will increase economy-wide productivity growth. The spatial distribution of ?within? and ?structural? variation gives an interpretation of the spatial patterns that characterize European productivity growth and its sustainability in the long run. In the second part of the paper, to assess what are the impacts of the variables that play a role on ?structural? and ?within? variation, a cross-sectional growth regression model is used. At this regard, it is conceivable that the growth of productivity, and of its two components, depends on own region as well as neighbouring region characteristics, on the spatial connectivity structure of the regions, and on the strength of spatial dependence. In order to take account all these aspects in the analysis, a spatial Durbin model is adopted. This spatial econometric model allows also to solve both the problem of spatial dependence in the residuals and of omitted explanatory variables. Furthermore it includes both spatially lagged dependent and independent variables and allows to accounts for spatial spillover effects: a change in a single explanatory variable in a certain region has a ?direct impact? on that region as well an ?indirect impact? on other regions due to the spatial connectivity relationships. Finally regarding the conditioning variables included in the regression model, emphasis is put on the Structural Funds and on an institutional regional quality indicator. Assessing their roles on structural change is essential to develop politics able to use the full potential of the Structural Funds.

In this paper, we report and analyse, for 83 European cities, the share of respondents aged 65 years or older agreeing that the city where they live is a good place to live for elderly people. Results contribute to identify common patterns and inform policy makers.

In this paper, votes registered by parties with a high anti-elite and anti-European salience are mapped, in order to identify potential geographical patterns in European regions.

Abstract
In this note we use dyadic data to address the issue of the spread of political regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa from 1977 to 2014. Dyadic data are binary relationship between countries and provide a data-rich environment for the study of international relations. We address the issue of correlation between these dyadic observations, which generates a cluster of dependent observations associated with that country. We find that borders matter, since often the effect of home- and foreign-grown variables have differentiated effects on democracy in one country.

The political unification of Italy in 1861 led to the establishment of a single market, by removing the trade barriers across the pre-existing states, with a single currency. Market integration was the economic outcome of this process. At the same time, the Kingdom of Italy started a large infrastructure project to spread railways, which were largely confined in Northern Italy, all over the country. Using tools from spatial econometrics, we find that railways played a positive effect on productivity, but this effect was stronger in the areas in which railways were already built. Moreover, railways helped industrial firms to locate closer to water sources and gain access from there to the overall market. This effect is in line with New Economic Geography according to which infrastructure lead to a widening of territorial disparities.

In our contribution, by using data from European Social Survey, we show that the percentage of happy people in European countries has increased over the last two decades, and that Eastern European countries are catching up. However, considerable differences between nations remain.

AbstractThis article analyses the temporary and permanent effects of remittances on subnational economic growth in Ecuador. We find that both effects are statistically significant. However, while the size of first is negligible, the magnitude of the permanent effect is inversely related to the stage of development. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.