Enrique Lopez-Bazo (p)

This paper studies the role of the region’s innovative context on the firm’s propensity to innovate exploiting a rich panel dataset of firms in the Spanish regions over the last decades. An empirical model is derived from a theoretical framework in which the contextual factors affect the benefits and costs of innovation for the firm. The resulting specification controls for observed and unobserved sources of firm heterogeneity. In other words it estimates the effect of the innovative context of the region once the spatial sorting of firms is accounted for. In addition, it discusses the effect that persistency in the firm's innovation process has on the estimate of the effect of the region's context. Previous evidence in the extant literature supports the role played by factors internal to the firm as well as by the determinants of the region’s innovative environment. However, these studies fail to fully control for the firms’ spatial sorting. Overall, the results in this paper suggest that the direct influence of the innovative context of the region on the firm's innovation activity (measured in terms of inputs and outputs) is negligible, and that the positive previous evidence may be the result of the lack of control of the firms' spatial sorting. These results hold for the periods before and after the Great Recession.

Oliver Ludewig (p), Michaela Fuchs

East-German firms still have a lower productivity than their Wet-German counterparts. On an aggregate level median labour productivity was in 2013 by almost 18% lower than in West Germany. In the public and political debate this difference is viewed as a long lasting consequence of the East German socialist past.
However, there are also other factors influencing firm productivity. For example in regional economics it is routinely shown, that firms are the more productive the more urban the region is in which it is located. Yet, in East Germany the share of urban regions is much smaller than in the West. Therefore we hypothesise that a large part of the East German productivity gap is due to the regional differences and not to the shadow of socialism. Thus, we ask whether a part of the productivity gap between East and West stems from the different regional compositions of both parts of Germany or not and how import the regional component is. An answer to theses question would be important for policy makers, because only a correct diagnosis allows an effective cure.
We attempt to analyse the productivity gap using a large scale employer survey provided by the Institute of Employment Research. It covers up to 15.000 establishments each year in the period from 1996 to 2014. First descriptive evidence for the end of the observation period suggest, the productivity gap was very large in urban areas and relatively small – half of the aggregated average gap – in rural areas. At the same time almost three quarters of West German establishments are located in more urban areas while in East Germany three quarters of the establishments are located in the more rural areas. These first results are substantiating our reasoning. However, further econometric analyses (production function) will show whether these descriptive findings are misleading or regional factors (density, specialisation etc.) are really explaining a substantial part of the output gap.

Maria Markatou (p), Olga Christopoulou

A "geographical indication" (GI) is the name of a product where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin. It is a type of intellectual property right that can apply in the EU to different types of products. There are four schemes of protection, for wines, spirits, agricultural products and food stuffs and aromatized wine products. There are also four kinds of benefits of GIs: Consumer, producer, societal and environmental. Consumer benefits are related to the idea of quality assurance (the consumer is assured he is buying a genuine product with specific qualities). Producer benefits focus on open system, fair competition, protection, price premium and promotion principles. Societal benefits are of different nature and being associated with linking valuable products to rural areas, protect traditions and reconnect consumers and producers. Finally environmental benefits are connected to land planning, as they deal with linking traditional products with landscapes and farming systems.

The paper aims at presenting the current level of geographical indication products, as registered in the European Union of 28 countries till the end of 2016, collecting data for each geographical indication product for five European and Mediterranean countries, namely France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain for the scheme of agricultural products and food stuffs. In this context, the paper is structured in four parts: First part focuses on the theoretical background of geographical indication products and their importance for economy and society. Part two deals with methodology issues. Third part presents the results and last part synthesizes and concludes. In relation to results, the paper aims at updating the results of the already mentioned previous study, expand and complete the database especially for the case environmental benefits (linking traditional products with their landscapes), analyze the main characteristics of those products in relation to their local and regional landscapes and build aggregates at sectoral and geographical levels of analysis.

Konstantinos Melachroinos (p), Nigel Spence (p)

To specialize or not to specialize, that is the question!
Recent research by others (Kemeny and Storper, 2014) has provided clarification of the meaning of the term and codification of the variety of forms that it can take. Furthermore, it is now possible to situate each type of specialization measure in an appropriate conceptual context from a regional economic growth viewpoint. The aim of this paper is to use these advances to judge whether a region specialising in an economic activity, whatever that may constitute, is a positive influence on its economic performance however defined. More specialization, or less, can occur naturally, organically or by design and intervention. Whatever is the driving force for changing levels of specialization, it is important to understand probable impacts on economic outcomes. Here the lens is focused on British regions, a territory comfortable with notions of industrial diversification and its importance since the time of the Barlow report almost eight decades since.