Investigaciones Regionales - Journal of Regional Research has published the 65rd Issue, the second volume corresponding to 2026.
Below you will find the summaries of the papers published in this volume, which can be accessed at https://investigacionesregionales.org/en/revista/spatial-econometrics-and-regional-science-in-memoriam-of-jesus-mur-and-ana-angulo/
We invite authors to submit papers at https://investigacionesregionales.org/en/envio-de-articulos/submission-of-papers-and-others-contributions/
Issue 65
Special Issue 2026 Spatial econometrics and regional science
Editorial
Fernando A. López, M. Luz Maté, Manuel Ruiz
Spatial econometrics and regional science. In memoriam of Jesús Mur and Ana Angulo
This special issue of Investigaciones Regionales is published in memory of Professors Jesús Mur and Ana Angulo, both faculty members of the Department of Economic Analysis at the University of Zaragoza. Their research made a decisive contribution to consolidating spatial econometrics within regional science, with a sustained emphasis—both methodological and empirical—on the importance of model specification and selection when incorporating spatial structure. As a tribute, the issue includes the re-publication (with permission) of their paper “Model selection strategies in a spatial setting: Some additional results”, originally published in Regional Science and Urban Economics (2009), which remains an indispensable reference in the literature. The remaining articles extend this legacy from complementary perspectives. Taken as a whole, the monograph highlights the continued relevance of Mur and Angulo’s central message: when space is part of the data-generating mechanism, reliable inference requires taking specification strategy seriously.
Keywords: Spatial econometrics; specification; model selection; regional science; spatiotemporal dependence
Jesús Mur, Ana Angulo
Model selection strategies in a spatial setting: Some additional results
This paper continues from the discussion of Florax et al. (Florax, R., H. Folmer and S. Rey, 2003. Specification searches in spatial econometrics: the relevance of Hendry’s methodology. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 33, 557–579.), regarding the properties of various specification strategies for spatial econometric models. Habitual practise has popularised a technique based on the well-known Lagrange Multipliers, characterized as a Specific- to-General approach, and which seems to give good results. In our work, we contemplate other alternatives, some of which may be seen as slight variations of this proposal, including the selection tests of Vuong (Vuong, Q., 1989. Likelihood ratio-tests for model selection and non-nested hypotheses. Econometrica, 57, 307–333.) and of Clarke (Clarke, K., 2003. Nonparametric model discrimination in international relations. Journal of Conflict Resolutions, 47, 72–93.). We also examine an approach of the General-to-Specific type, as clearly opposite to the others. The comparison of the two strategies is carried out through a Monte Carlo experiment, the results of which are quite diffuse, in the sense that we do not find conclusive evidence in favour of either of these two approaches. However, it should be recognized that the General-to-Specific strategy seems to be more robust to the existence of anomalies in the Data Generating Process.
Keywords: Spatial econometrics; specification strategy; model selection techniques
Francesca Centofanti, Roberto Basile, Francesca Licari, Jacopo Pitari
The effect of internal migration on regional growth in Italy: a dynamic spatial panel data analysis
This study assesses the effect of internal migration on regional growth in Italy at the NUTS-3 level over the period 2002-2019. The composition of the internal migration flows of the working-age population in Italy during the sample period appears substantially heterogeneous in nationality and labor skills. The analysis considers this heterogeneity, estimating various specifications of the dynamic spatial model and controlling for the endogeneity of migration variables through a control function approach. The evidence suggests that the internal migration of Italian citizens has a positive direct and spillover impact on regional growth, slowing down the convergence process. On the contrary, there is no evidence of a significant effect of internal migration of foreign citizens. Taking the skill composition of internal movements of Italian citizens into account, the adverse impact on convergence is magnified, thus corroborating the skill-selective hypothesis. Finally, the diverging impact of internal migration increases with the distance of migration flows.
Keywords: Regional growth; convergence; migration; spatial dynamic models
Marcos Herrera-Gómez, Sadit Ruano, Manuel Salvador Figueras
Regional Economic Growth in Colombia: the role of Fiscal corruption and the Armed conflict
This research explores the impact of armed violence and corruption on the economic growth of Colombia’s departments from 1991 to 2017. Using models of spatial panels, statics and dynamics, we detect positive space-time indirect effects on departmental growth, including evidence of beta-convergence. Specifically, fiscal corruption exhibited a significant negative impact on short-term economic growth. Moreover, corruption primarily affected growth at the local level, with limited spillover effects observed from neighboring regions. Interestingly, our analysis did not yield statistically significant evidence regarding the impact of armed violence on economic growth.
Keywords: Economic growth; spatial dynamic model; fiscal corruption; armed conflict; beta convergence
Virgilio Pérez, Jose M. Pavía
Cross-section and longitudinal spatial statistics and econometric models rely on spatially and temporally referenced data. Administrative units like cities, counties, and provinces provide stable data sources, enabling models to combine statistics collected at different times. In Spain, census sections serve as the smallest territorial units in which official statistics are delivered. These areas offer valuable statistics, such as population and housing censuses. Providing these statistics at the postcode level is also pertinent for conducting local analyses and surveys. The issue is that boundaries of census sections undergo regular updates, sometimes involving significant reorganization. The R-package sc2sc automates the transfer of variables between different census sections and postal codes. This paper introduces the package and outlines its methodology, which employs areal weighting to transfer counts and rates.
Keywords: Spatial statistics; longitudinal data; census sections; R-stats; sc2sc; geospatial analysis
Maryna Makeienko, Mariano Matilla-García
Spatial Trends and Spatial Econometric Structures: practical application to a different context data
Spatial trend concept was proved to be useful to depict the systematic variations of the phenomenon concerned over a region based on geographical locations. We use three different geographical datasets to check if there exist potential leading deterministic spatial components and whether we can econometrically model spatial economic relations that might contain unobserved spatial structure of unknown form. Hypothesis testing is conducted with a symbolic-entropy based non-parametric statistical procedure, proposed in Garcia-Cordoba et al. (2019), which does not rely on prior weight matrices assumptions. Geographically restricted semiparametric spatial models are taken to perform a modeling strategy for cross-sectional data sets. The main question to be responded is whether the models that merely incorporate space coordinates might be sufficient to capture space dependence when applied to different types of data. Moreover, it is important to study what intrinsic characteristics of the economic problem or the dependent variable itself make feasible (and optimal) to use the specific methodological approach.
Keywords: Symbolic entropy; spatial trends; applied analysis
David Garnés-Galindo, Manuel Ruiz-Marín, María Luz Maté-Sánchez-Val
The objective of this study is to estimate the impact of Covid-19 on business behavior and its spatial effect among companies. Four specifications have been developed to analyze the pandemic’s influence on key variables determining business behavior: liquidity, indebtedness, profitability, and efficiency. This study has focused on the province of Barcelona, Spain, from which a database of failed and non-failed companies has been compiled, both before and after the pandemic. The models have been estimated using the spatial Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR) methodology, and each equation was estimated following a spatial Differences-in-Differences model. The results confirm that the emergence of Covid-19 has had a significant impact on companies’ financial ratios, worsening their positions in terms of liquidity, indebtedness, and efficiency, with the existence of a spatial contagion pattern.
Keywords: Business failure; covid; Differences-in-Differences; current ratio; debt ratio; profitability; efficiency; spatial dependence
Julián Ramajo, Alejandro Ricci-Risquete, Geoffrey J.D. Hewings
This paper analyzes the evolution of the aggregate production in the Spanish regional economic system between 2000Q1 and 2023Q4 proposing a spatiotemporal growth model for the Autonomous Communities in Spain that simultaneously accounts for the presence of time-series dynamics, cross-sectional spatial dependence, common factors, and regional heterogeneity. The econometric specification used in the empirical application includes time-lagged variables, spatial and spatiotemporal lagged variables, a dynamic common factor (the national growth), and some parameters varying regionally, so we consider all the key stylized facts that complex regional economic growth processes exhibit over time.
Keywords: Temporal dynamics; spatial dependence; spatio-temporal models; regional production; Spain
Artícles
European Regional Policy
Juan R. Cuadrado-Roura
Four decades of the european regional & cohesion policy. An overview
The paper addresses two research questions: first, what factors explain the continuity of the Cohesion Policy (CP); and second, to what extent such policy has contributed to reducing territorial disparities across the EU and to achieve other objectives. The article advances some hypotheses, and the analysis highlights the core pillars of the CP: its ‘philosophy’, evolving objectives, financial resources, and institutional architecture. It further evaluates outcomes in some key areas: convergence trends, infrastructure investment, human capital formation, and support for SMEs. The findings suggest that while CP has contributed to reducing territorial disparities and other positive achievements linked to the European economic and welfare growth, its effectiveness varies across regions, and some policy domains face persistent challenges such as effectiveness, bureaucratization, and regional/sectoral policy conflicts which give support to important criticisms.
Keywords: Regional Policy; Cohesion Policy; Principles and philosophy; sectoral policies; convergence; problems and criticisms
Books reviews
Fernando Rubiera Morollón
Recently, in 2025, Edward Elgar published the Thematic Encyclopedia of Regional Science. This massive work, over 800 pages long, contains more than 300 entries and features contributions from nearly one hundred researchers worldwide, coordinated by the editors: Peter Nijkamp, Karima Kourtit, Kingsley E. Haynes, and Zeynep Elburz.