Bruna F., Lopez-Rodriguez J. and Faíña A. Market potential, spatial dependences and spillovers in European regions, Regional Studies. This paper reinterprets the new economic geography (NEG) ‘wage’ equation by distinguishing two different types of spatial dependences: a global spatial trend and local spatial autocorrelation. A measure of the variable Market Potential in this equation can capture both a global core–periphery pattern and spillovers, while the standard weights matrices of spatial econometrics tend to be designed to capture short-distance interactions among neighbours. Using cross-sectional European regional data, the paper compares different weighting schemes to build spatial lags. The estimation of spatial models of an NEG equation for gross value added per capita (GVApc) reveals new research challenges.

Despite the abundant literature in Happiness Science, no paper to date has studied the joint effects of human values on subjective well-being at individual and contextual level. Using European Social Survey data for life satisfaction and Salomon H. Schwartz’s scale for human values with four and ten dimensions, this paper presents novel evidence on the direct effects of individual, regional, and national human values, utilizing two different ways of building cultural indicators of human values. We show that regional factors explain approximately 2% of the dispersion of individual life satisfaction, whereas national factors explain around 12%. The results on the effects of individual human values support Sortheix and Schwartz’s hypothesis, with a significant difference: IndividualConformityhas a positive impact on well-being, not the negative sign Sortheix and Schwartz predict forConservationvalues. We also find positive direct cultural effects forBenevolenceandConformityand negative effects forTradition. Additionally, we propose a research agenda for human values and contextual effects on well-being studies.

This is the first study that uses multilevel modelling to analyze regional influence on the decision to invest in innovation activities of firms in a single developing country, Ecuador. Our results indicate that the decisions to invest in R&D and in other innovation activities are conditioned by the region in which the firm is located. Regional volume of loans, orientation to knowledge exploitation and intra-regional-sectorial R&D spillovers are positively associated with both types of innovation activities, while regional levels of cooperation and inter-regional R&D spillovers are only positively associated with the probability of investing in other innovation activities.

La cultura, como conjunto de creencias, valores y normas predominantes en una sociedad, ejerce un papel central en distintos fenómenos asociados a una pandemia. En este artículo analizamos un conjunto de indicadores culturales que influyen en la definición y seguimiento de las normas de higiene, distanciamiento físico y confinamiento. Los principales resultados apuntan a que los españoles tienen bajos niveles de confianza en los demás, pero altos niveles en el valor de conformidad. Ello abre una agenda de investigación sobre la forma en la cual estas creencias y valores, y su agregación en normas sociales de naturaleza cultural, propician distintos modelos de políticas públicas para hacer frente a la crisis sanitaria, la aceptación social de estas políticas y su efectividad.

1. In their study of a New Economic Geography (NEG) equation for a sample of European regions, Head and Mayer (2006) compared the estimation results obtained for two different approaches. The first...