Labor Productivity, Infrastructure Endowment, and Regional Spillovers in the European Union

Bouvet, Florence. (2007) Labor Productivity, Infrastructure Endowment, and Regional Spillovers in the European Union. In: UNSPECIFIED, Montreal, Canada. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This paper assesses whether disparities in regional public infrastructure endowments can explain regional disparities in labor productivity among European regions. Using a large sample of European regions, I distinguish the effects of overall infrastructure endowment from the effect of three categories of public infrastructure (transport network, energy provision and telecommunication network). When I control for a time trend and regional-specific effects, only the overall infrastructure endowment and telecommunication network boost regional labor productivity. I find evidence of spatial autocorrelation in labor productivity for contiguous regions and regions with identical levels of income per capita. When I control for spatial dependence, only the overall infrastructure index maintains its positive effect on regional productivity. The statistical results do not provide evidence of quantitatively important productivity spillovers.

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