Series/Report no.:
41st Congress of the European Regional Science Association: "European Regional Development Issues in the New Millennium and their Impact on Economic Policy", 29 August - 1 September 2001, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to quantify the effects of the spatial diffusion of growth, on the convergence process observed among the Spanish regions during the last 20 years. A preliminary study on the beta and sigma regional convergence processes, considering regions as geographically independent elements, is followed by the analysis of the spatial dimension of data: the possibility of spatial interactions among regions is tested using the spatial autocorrelation Moran’s I index. Finally, the spatial autocorrelation detected is included in the beta-convergence model, in order to correct, on the one hand, the statistical inference problems originated in the spatial dependence of regions, and, on the other hand, to be able to quantify the regional spill-over effects of growth.