Ana-Maria Opria (p), Lucian Roșu

Frank van Oort

see extended abstract

Fatima El Khatabi (p), Carlos Llano Verduras, Inmaculada Martinez-Zarzoso

Frank van Oort

This paper is the first to build a dataset on bilateral trade flows between provinces of a developed and a developing country. It offers insights to existing datasets for developed countries, such as the US and Canada, or countries in Europe. We present a province-to-province (NUTS3) trade dataset between Spain and Morocco compiled by combining trade and freight statistics for the period 2010-2018 split into 15 sectors and 3 transport modes. The dataset is used to estimate a gravity equation, which identifies the main determinants of bilateral trade and controls for singular geographical relations between entities. Moreover, we discuss port hinterland issues in Morocco and analyze potential connections of inland Moroccan provinces with selected ports. Our results are of special relevance for the EU-MENA relations and provide interesting insights for other countries whose colonial ties reversed in hostilities and political differences.

Daragh O'Leary (p), Bernadette Power, Justin Doran

Frank van Oort

This paper uses an incredibly novel dataset from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) of Ireland concerning business demography data at the NACE 4-digit level with over 100,000 observations pertaining to 34 Irish regions between the 2008-2016.The paper seeks to advance knowledge concerning firm dynamic interrelationships (relationships between firm births and deaths over time) by developing related and unrelated variety firm birth and firm death variables. To the best of the authors knowledge, these variables have never been applied before by any other paper examining this topic. The utilisation of these related and unrelated variety firm birth and firm death variables will allow for not only the examination of the relationships between aggregate firm births and firm deaths over time, but also the relationships between firm births and firm deaths in related sectors and unrelated sectors over time. This will provide further insight into the workings of competition and multiplier effects originally tested for by Johnson and Parker (1994). Results for related variety based firm dynamic activity measures show the multiplier effect is present as firm births in related sectors seem to positively influence future firm births and firm deaths in related sectors appear to negatively impact future firm births. Additionally, results for unrelated variety-based variables indicate presence of the competition effect as firm births in unrelated sectors negatively impact future firm births while firm deaths in unrelated sectors positively influence future firm births. In the case of determining firm deaths, unrelated variety measures provide mixed results. These findings have considerable implications or Irish policy concerning entrepreneurship. For example, the Enterprise Ireland organisation, who offer several grants and investment schemes for Irish firms and start-ups with the aim of fostering and developing Irish entrepreneurship and approved spending of €43 million to start-ups alone in 2020 (EI, 2020).