This article sets out to test econometrically the performance and determinants of NUTS III regions in Greece during the recent economic crisis. Results indicate that economic crisis has further intensified regional inequalities by strengthening the prominent role of Athens metropolitan region in the development map of the country. Advanced regions with higher specialization in tradable and export-oriented sectors adjusted better to economic crisis, although deeper integration with the EU market has not been favourable to regional performance. Finally, public policies that improve the productive and social capital of the regions seem to play an important role in deterring the crisis.

This paper investigates the policy context of spatial injustice in Greece. Given the polarized nature of the economy and the centralized structure of the public sector, the paper examines whether place-based policies that attempt to strengthen the local level and mobilize local assets would be better opt to deliver a fair and equitable distribution of socially valued resources and opportunities in space. In this context, the paper presents and discusses the findings of four case studies and four policy-driven actions related to the design and implementation of a post-lignite local strategy, the establishment of a credible innovation strategy in a metropolitan area, the development of social economy in a lagging region and the upscaling of local government in a medium-sized city. The case studies investigate the conditioning factors that encourage or obstruct the local level to implement effective place-based policies that can contribute to spatial justice. On this basis, the paper evaluates the capability of the current policy and institutional setting to generate spatial justice and provides policy recommendations that will empower the local level in confronting socio-economic challenges and unbalanced spatial growth.

This research analyses the effects of international trade, relative specialization and regional industrial structure on Greek regional employment growth over the 1995-2003 period. For this purpose, it employs trade-adjusted shift-share analysis, along with linear model extensions. The results obtained highlight the importance of local conditions and regional deviations from business cycles and sectoral trends. Relative regional specialization has, on average, a positive effect on regional employment growth. The direction of industry-mix effects depends on specializing on growing or declining sectors. Imports have negative employment effects; the exports' positive effect is weak and domestic demand remains an important positive factor. Copyright (c) 2009 the author(s). Journal compilation (c) 2009 RSAI.

The paper explores the spatial dynamics in the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) countries, in a period of significant transformations in their internal and external economic environment. Regional disparities are reported to be the net outcome of two opposite dynamics: a pro-cyclical pattern, on the one hand, with dynamic and developed regions growing faster in periods of expansion and slower in periods of recession, and a long-term spread effect, on the other, partly offsetting the cumulative impact of growth on space after some critical level of development. In this framework, expanding trade relations with the European Union advanced countries may be an additional source of spatially unbalanced growth and polarization for the ENP countries, as the costs and benefits of integration prove to be unevenly allocated in space. To the extent that growth and integration dynamics tend to polarize the ENP economic space, a set of critical policy questions arise.