Vassilis Monastiriotis, Vassilis Tselios, Dimitris Kallioras (p)

Emerging concerns about climate change have led to questions, within academic circles, about the scope and the usefulness of international academic conferences, given the carbon footprints they generate. Owing to the on-going improvement of information and communication technology, such concerns are gaining in intensity as an era of fast and, relatively, cheap (e-)communication methods, where personal contacts and dissemination can be maintained seamlessly, has been emerging. Thus, a question arises with respect to the rationale and the necessity for organizing international academic conferences. Is there a basis for continuing with the "conventional" system of flying about 1,000+ academics an average of twice a year, every year, for each and every sub-discipline of academic enquiry?
Our paper examines whether there is a "local development footprint", which could justify maintaining face-to-face international academic conferences despite their increasing environmental costs and their declining productivity benefits. Particularly, our paper examines whether international academic conferences help stimulate host economies by raising demand, not only temporarily, through the inflow of delegates, but also more permanently, enhancing the profile of the host economies (branding), bringing-in sponsorship (funding) and upgrading human capital (skilling). To this end, our paper estimates, within the context of regional growth regressions, the effects, the temporal and the permanent, of international academic conferences on economic growth performance across European regions (NUTS III spatial level), utilizing data obtained from Cambridge Econometrics as well as from a series of academic associations. Examining whether the effects of, face-to-face, international academic conferences with respect to regional economic growth performance, vary over time, by type of region, by type of conference, and by size of conference, our paper discusses the implications of the findings for the structure and the scope of international academic conferences as well as for regional strategies concerning the hosting of such academic events.

Silvia Cerisola (p)

The importance of culture, history, religion and identity in the potential of any territory to develop is now generally accepted (see Rodríguez-Pose 2013). Place and culture are persistently intertwined. Places of cultural significance enrich people’s lives, often providing a deep and inspirational sense of connection to community and landscape, to the past and to lived experiences (Burra Charter 1999). The importance of local history and cultural heritage in shaping the features of local systems and in affecting their economic outcomes is increasingly recognized (see, for instance, JPI 2014 and Symbola and Unioncamere 2016). The potentially positive impact of cultural heritage on economic development, indeed, has gained more and more attention throughout different disciplines. Such impact however, is often just assumed or thought to occur exclusively through cultural tourism (see, among others, Carr 1994 and Snowball 2013). Thus, further research is needed in order to measure this effect and investigate the mechanisms through which it (possibly) takes place.
This work aims at overcoming such a gap by introducing the original idea that one possible mediator between cultural heritage and regional economic development exists. This mediator can be identified in creativity (possibly expressed according to different patterns), which is expected to explain the local capacity to exploit cultural heritage for economic purposes. In this sense, the main research question this work tries to answer is: does creativity mediate the effect of cultural heritage on economic development?
In order to answer such question, cultural heritage is defined and measured, and its potential direct impact on economic development (employment growth) is empirically investigated in Italian provinces (NUTS3 level). Subsequently - taking advantage of an innovative conceptual framework and measurement method for creativity proposed in a previous work (Cerisola 2016) – the whole process (from cultural heritage to local economic development through creativity) is econometrically analyzed for Italian provinces.
Finally, some policy suggestions on how to trigger and strengthen local economic performance through cultural heritage and creativity are put forward.

Heike Delfmann (p)

Leeuwarden, capital of the Dutch province of Fryslân, was chosen as European Capital of Culture (ECOC) for 2018. Major cultural events are often seen by local stakeholders as important opportunities to stimulate economic, socio-cultural and life-satisfaction aspects. The ECOC is such an event but legacy research has shown inconclusive proof of its effect. This paper focuses on the economic aspect. Using the concept of resilience, we aim to determine the impact of the ECOC, as a positive ´shock´ to the system, on the creation of new firms and firm growth. The winning of the bid in 2013 is defined as the first minor shock, which could have already triggered new firm creation. Using LISA data of Friesland we establish the impact of the start of this event and track the development till the current situation. The research question we aim to answer is: will the ECOC boost new entrepreneurship and if so, will the effect last?

Tomaso G Pompili (p)

The tourism industry contributes significantly to the Italian valued added, accounting for almost one tenth of its gross domestic product. In this paper we investigate the impact of tourism on the gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 103 Italian Provinces (NUTS 3) comparing two different time periods: the crisis- and the pre-crisis-period.
We will use a panel dataset where the dependent variable is the annual average rate of per capita GDP growth, computed over three three-year periods: 2010-2007, 2007-2004 and 2004-2001. This procedure is preferred to use of year-on-year growth rates in order to reduce the influence of business cycle fluctuations.
Following Marrocu and Paci (2013), the standard growth model (with the per capita GDP and stock of physical capital at the initial periods as explanatory variables), will be augmented with the number of foreign and domestic overnight stays at destination and a set of territorial controls (human, technological, social and environmental capital; population density; industrial structure; crime etc.). The tourism variable is introduced in this aggregate production function model because considered as a proxy for the tourist attractiveness of each province.
The basic specification will then be extended by adding multiplicative dummies in order to appreciate the effects of some dependent variables in the crisis-period.
A further element of originality is that we consider the more disaggregated unit of analysis for which data on GDP growth are available for Italy, the Province. This should allow us to better disentangle the effects of tourism, usually unfolding at the provincial level rather than at the regional one. However, our methodology will control for spatial correlation by introducing spatially lagged regressors. Moreover, we will take into account the most recent spatial econometrics developments (Halleck Vega and Elhorst, 2013) for the specification of the spatial matrix W.
We will also consider endogeneity problems, by including temporally lagged explanatory variables. Several checks will be performed in order to verify the robustness of our results.
We expect to find a positive relationship between tourism and GDP growth in both periods and an even higher effect of foreign tourism in the crisis-period.