Prof. Artur Bajerski (p)

In many European rural regions, demographic decline and fiscal constraints are increasingly challenging the viability of small local schools. In Poland, a legal mechanism introduced in 2009 allows municipalities to transfer small public primary schools — typically enrolling fewer than 70 pupils — to non-governmental operators, such as associations, foundations, or private individuals, rather than closing them. In practice, these transfers often occur when rural schools face potential liquidation or organisational downgrading, making community involvement a key factor in maintaining local educational provision.
This paper examines publicly funded schools operated by non-local government entities in rural Poland between 2010 and 2025. It asks how widespread this organisational model has become and whether community-run schools can maintain stable educational provision over time. The study approaches school transfers as locally embedded institutional responses shaped by demographic pressures, municipal decision-making and community mobilisation.
The research combines quantitative analysis of nationwide datasets derived from public statistics and the Polish Ministry of Education with qualitative case studies of selected association-run schools. Statistical analysis identifies temporal developments and spatial differentiation in the emergence of 'transferred' schools, while semi-structured interviews with representatives of associations and foundations provide insight into governance practices, financial arrangements and relations between schools and local communities.
The discussion draws on concepts of social and territorial capital to interpret how local organisational capacity and collective action influence the persistence of educational institutions in peripheral areas. By focusing on efforts to keep village schools open, the paper evaluates whether community-run public education constitutes a durable institutional arrangement or a context-dependent response to rural demographic shrinkage.

Mr. Zoltán Oláh (p), Dr. Gábor Bodnár (p)

Endogenous development has become a central concept in regional science, shifting attention from exogenous transfers toward the strategic mobilization of local resources. Building on the territorial capital perspective, this study examines how different forms of capital interact and jointly shape regional development outcomes. Rather than analyzing capital types in isolation, the research focuses explicitly on their interactions and cumulative effects.
The empirical analysis investigates Hungarian districts and compares two benchmark years, 2017 and 2023, capturing a period that spans relative economic stability and subsequent global crises. Given the size of the country, districts were selected as the unit of analysis, as the examination of smaller territorial units allows for a more detailed analysis and reveals clearer regional differences. By incorporating a temporal dimension, the study identifies structural shifts in development trajectories and examines how patterns of capital accumulation and inter-capital relationships have evolved. This approach allows for a dynamic assessment of endogenous development processes under changing macroeconomic conditions.
Using multivariate statistical methods combined with spatial visualization, the study identifies the key drivers of spatial disparities and regional performance. Its main contribution lies in revealing which configurations and interactions of endogenous capital most effectively support regional development and mitigate spatial inequalities. By doing so, the research advances the operationalization of endogenous development theory in empirical regional analysis.

Dr. Paula Cruz-García (p), Dr. Jesús Peiró-Palomino, Dr. Ernesto Rodríguez-Crespo

In the era of the digital transition, online banking has become an essential channel for accessing financial services. Social trust is key for financial development, but its specific impact on online banking remains largely unexplored, particularly at the subnational level. This paper analyses the influence of social trust on the adoption of online banking among a sample of 235 European Union regions between 2011 and 2024. The results suggest that social trust is a strong predictor of online banking adoption, and are robust to the inclusion of multiple control variables, fixed effects and endogeneity. These findings offer valuable insights for regional policies related to the digital transition within the European Union member states. The results have relevant implications for EU policies aimed at closing territorial gaps in digitalization. Strengthening trust-related institutional and community factors may accelerate the diffusion of online financial services, support financial access in lagging regions, and contribute to a more balanced territorial development across the EU.

Dr. Paula Herrera-Idárraga (p), Dr Hector Galindo-Silva

How do religious identities change? We study the effects of civic education reforms on religious identification using Colombia’s 1991 Constitution, which dismantled the country’s confessional regime and mandated constitutional instruction in high schools. Exploiting cohort-based variation in exposure to the reform and nationally representative survey data, we implement a difference-in-differences design. We find that exposure to the constitutional curriculum reduced Catholic self-identification by about three percentage points. This decline reflects a reallocation of religious identities rather than a generalized decline in religiosity. In regions where Catholic institutional presence was historically weaker, Catholic losses translate into switching toward non-Catholic Christian denominations and higher religious attendance. In contrast, in regions where Catholic dominance was stronger, the decline is associated with increased secular identification and lower attendance. These patterns hold across ethnic and non-ethnic groups and are shaped primarily by regional religious supply rather than ethnicity per se. Overall, the results show that civic education can reconfigure religious identities by reshaping the relative legitimacy of competing affiliations.

Dr. Anna Lewczuk-Czerwińska (p), Prof. Katarzyna Metelska-Szaniawska

Our paper relates to constitutional compliance, focusing on the so-called de jure–de facto gaps, defined as “non-congruence between provisions explicitly written down in the document called the constitution and the behavior of the top representatives of the various government branches such as cabinet members, legislators, and members of the country’s top court(s)” (Voigt 2021). The literature identifies three main groups of determinants of constitutional compliance: (1) design factors, such as constitutional provisions that envisage sanctions for violations (Gutmann et al. 2023); (2) environmental factors, including cultural background, political conflict, and socio-economic characteristics (Law & Versteeg 2013; Gutmann et al. 2023; Lewkowicz et al. 2023); and (3) non-state actors, particularly citizens, who may constrain government behavior (Lewkowicz & Lewczuk 2023; Kantorowicz & Metelska-Szaniawska 2023).
We extend this literature by investigating the potential spatial diffusion of constitutional compliance and its relationship with economic development. Specifically, we ask whether spatial waves of constitutional compliance can be identified among countries grouped by geographic proximity, income level, or political regime.
To address this question, we estimate a spatial panel econometric model for a sample of 122 countries covering the period 1995–2023 (preliminary specification: SAC model):
constitutional compliance_it=ρWconstitutional compliance_it+ β_1 democracy_it+β_2 low income_it+β_3 middle income_it+β_4 Wconstitutional compliance_it* democracy_it+β_5 Wspatial lag ofconstitutional compliance_it*low income_it+β_6 Wspatial lag ofconstitutional compliance_it*middle income_it+〖β_7 X〗_it+u_it
u_it=λWu_it+ε_it
where:
- W is either inverse squared distance or cultural distance matrix (currently based on Eff 2008),
democracy is a binary variable indicating whether country is a democracy (Bjørnskov & Rode 2020),
- low income is a binary variable indicating whether a given country belongs to a low income group as defined by the World Bank (2024 Atlas GNI per capita ≤ $1,135),
- middle income is a binary variable indicating whether a given country belongs to a middle income group as defined by the World Bank (2024 Atlas GNI per capita between $1,136 and $13,935),
- X_it represents one of the following control variables: leader characteristics, civil society participation, polarization of society, fractionalization of government and opposition, regime type, length of constitution.
Preliminary results indicate a statistically significant and positive spatial spillover of constitutional compliance across countries. The magnitude of this effect is stronger in non-democratic states and in low- and middle-income countries. These findings are robust across alternative spatial matrices and model specifications.

Overall, the results suggest that constitutional compliance is not solely a domestic phenomenon but also exhibits meaningful spatial interdependence.