Infrastructure and Growth in a Spatial Framework: Evidence from the EU regions

This paper examines the return to infrastructure in the European Union regions in a spatial framework. It innovates on the earlier literature on infrastructure and growth by a combination of regional focus, disaggregation of infrastructure types and consideration of spatial dependence. Different types of infrastructure capital are considered as determinants of economic performance at the Nomenclature des Unités Territoriales Statistiques level. To account for growth spillovers among regions, a spatial Durbin model is estimated. The results confirm the important role of infrastructure and identify the highest rates of return as associated with telecommunication, quality and accessibility of transportation networks, with a positive impact of roads and railways.     

The Effect of Business Support on Employment in Manufacturing: Evidence from the European Union Structural Funds in Germany,Italy and Spain

This study investigates employment growth in the business activities supported by the European Cohesion Policy. We examine cross-industry, cross-regional variations in a sample of fourteen manufacturing industries and seventy European regions (in Germany, Italy and Spain) and take advantage of detailed European Union Structural Funds data at the regional level for the period 2000–2006. We show that business support is positively associated with higher employment growth in industries that are initially smaller and in those with higher growth opportunities. The results suggest that direct support to businesses by the European Cohesion Policy contributes to the growth process of employment in different industries. Because previous estimated effects at the aggregate level may in fact conceal large differences across industries, we conclude that our empirical analysis contributes to the understanding of how Structural Funds can affect industrial and regional development as well as adjustment paths.     

María Rosa Lida,Borges y una cita inexistente de Lucrecio: filología y auctoritas

In 1952, María Rosa Lida de Malkiel published a work in Sur magazine about the literary sources of Jorge Luis Borges. In the second paragraph of that work she relates a passage from one of the Argentine's stories with a verse from the Aeneid and, later on, two verses of the poem “Las calles” with some others from Lucretius' work De rerum natura. In both cases, she cites the number of the book and verse of the Latin poets. The one referring to Virgil is correct; however, Lucretius' verses are apocryphal. In this work, I analyze the reasons the eminent philologist could have had to carry out tremendous artifice and, at the same time, the objective and personal qualms that, during the revision, produced the auctoritas of her figure.