Lionel Vedrine (p), Guillaume Roulleau

Davide Luca

This article aims to evaluate the impact of mountain zoning in France.

Larisa Melnikova (p)

Tasos Kitsos

see extended abstract
One may observe the evident imbalance between aims of equity and efficiency in Russian regional policy. Encouraging of agglomerations’ growth acquire a force of federal law. The arguments used in strategic documents appear to be invalid or not verified enough. Difficulties in interpreting observable data relate to the use of macroeconomic indicators for testing the initially microeconomic models. This practice is stimulated by methodological challenges and is complicated by the lack of data. The assertions about clear advantages of the territorial concentration of economic activities in cities in terms of production efficiency, national growth, and reducing regional disparities must be tested carefully. If theoretical arguments implicitly contained in fundamental strategic documents are not supported by empirical evidence the proposed regional policies may be inadequate.
In the paper proposed the author tries to understand what kind of reasoning underlie the ongoing bias to large cities in regional policy; considers theoretical arguments and empirical estimates and methods of their assessment in strategic documents, scientific literature and in public discourse; provides for statistical assessments of relation between indicators of efficiency and spatial concentration of economic activities, based on aggregated microeconomic performance; discusses some factors that influence on the choice of spatial priorities in strategic planning and its reasoning.

Melani Cammett, Davide Luca (p), Ernest Sergenti

Tasos Kitsos

A significant body of research has explored how developmental public goods are allocated for strategic political reasons, beyond considerations of efficiency and equity. Most studies assume that the logic driving government distribution is similar across goods. In line with current research on clientelism and distributive politics, this paper relaxes this assumption. It explores patterns of central government spending on 10 distinct economic and social categories in Turkey from 2003 through 2014, when the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) gained and consolidated its hold on power. Regression results demonstrate how the central government systematically exploited the distribution of economic and social budget expenditures for strategic purposes, e.g. by targeting AKP strongholds with significantly higher amounts of government expenditure on education and defense, while providing provinces where the electoral battleground was closer with more locally, non-excludable, and irreversible goods. Provincial strongholds of the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), were the biggest losers, receiving the lowest amount of spending from the central government across most budget subcategories.