This article aims to shed light on the dynamics of Spanish regional unemployment rates and determine the driving forces of their disparities. The Spanish economy has one of the highest unemployment rates in the EU and is characterised by severe regional disparities. We apply the chain reaction theory of unemployment according to which the evolution of unemployment is driven by the interplay of lagged adjustment processes and the spillover effects within the labour market system. Our model includes nationwide as well as region-specific variables, and takes into account the limited labour and firm mobility in Spain. We show that the degree of labour market flexibility differs between high and low unemployment regions, and find that investment has a major influence on the unemployment trajectory. In addition, we find that in bad times high unemployment regions are hit more severely than low unemployment regions, while in good times, high unemployment regions do not benefit as much as low unemployment regions. Copyright (c) 2008 the author(s). Journal compilation (c) 2008 RSAI.

Interactions between fisheries and aquaculture have become a major issue that is still insufficiently studied. Therefore, the objective of this article is to test whether the cultured and wild gilthead sea bream in the Spanish seafood markets are integrated. By using the Johansen methodology, cointegration of the price series of farmed and wild gilthead sea bream was tested. In contrast to previous studies, our econometric results show that wild and the farmed gilthead sea bream form two heterogeneous products in the Spanish market. These new results question the generalization currently accepted by the scientific literature that farmed and wild fish are substitutes when they belong to the same species. The binomial product-market, along with some specific features of the Spanish market, such as the negative perceptions of aquaculture by some significant groups of consumers, appeared to have a great explanatory power for justifying these different results.

Bande R. and Karanassou M. Spanish regional unemployment revisited: the role of capital accumulation, Regional Studies. This paper provides new evidence for the evolution of regional unemployment rates in Spain over the period between 1980 and 2000. It argues that interactive dynamic systems of labour demand, wage setting and labour force equations (1) allow for a richer interpretation of regional disparities, and (2) can capture the unemployment effects of growing variables such as capital stock. After classifying the seventeen Spanish regions into high and low unemployment groups using kernel and cluster techniques, a structural labour market model is estimated for each group and the unemployment contributions of investment, benefits, taxes and the oil price are evaluated. It is found that the main driving force of regional unemployment swings is capital accumulation.

On both theoretical and empirical grounds, this paper demonstrates that the natural rate of unemployment (NRU) cannot explain the evolution of regional unemployment disparities in Spain. The analytical framework of the chain reaction theory (CRT) of unemployment argues that an interactive labour market system, rather than a single-equation model, is better equipped to accommodate unemployment dynamics and that unemployment does not gravitate towards its NRU due to the interplay of frictions and growth. Two groups of high and low unemployment regions are identified with substantial disparities that remain stable in their composition through time. Evaluating the natural rates for each group of regions, it is confirmed that regional unemployment disparities cannot be attributed to disparities in the NRUs. Thus, instead of focusing on the determinants of the NRU, an appraisal of the contributions of the exogenous variables to the unemployment trajectory should take hold in policy-making.