Abstract
Regional studies and research have a long record in Spain, which in the last three decades has been significantly enriched thanks to the contributions made by researchers from different fields, particularly by economists. The main result is that a large base of analytical works have been produced, carried out using rigorous approaches and methods, and which have shed new light on many of the country’s regional problems and their future prospects. Within this framework, however, it seems necessary to make a systematic study of the regional policies applied in Spain; supplemented by further works which assessed both their achievements and their limitations. This is precisely what gave rise to the design of this volume and the selection of the works which make it up. Of course, the book does not cover all issues which might be considered, but the contributions included analyze a set of issues which provides a wide and up-to-date view of the Spanish case. The starting point has been a review of the regional policies applied in Spain since the middle of the 1960s up to the present, with some previous issues which we thought should be known. Then, an assessment is made of factors which explain regional growth, the progress made towards reaching convergence, both with the EU and within Spain, the impact of the investments in infrastructures and human capital at regional level, the behavior of productivity and the analysis of the position of regional competitiveness.
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Notes
- 1.
An analysis of the progression of the studies about Regional Economy in Spain can be found in Cuadrado-Roura (2002).
- 2.
- 3.
See: Maroto and Cuadrado-Roura (2006). See Chap. 6 in this book.
- 4.
Figures estimated by the Bank of Spain.
- 5.
The immigration arrived in the last 8 years (which represents almost 10% of the Spanish population, when in 2002 it represented less than 5%) is at the base of the explanation of this fact.
- 6.
See Chap. 11.
- 7.
This amounts, respectively, to a 14.6% increase in total income and a 24.9% increase in employment (See Chap. 8).
- 8.
See also: Mas et al. (2007).
- 9.
The results of the analysis coincide with many of the studies of this kind made for other cases and countries.
- 10.
In its 6 th Economic Report on the Social and Economic Situation and Development of the Regions in the European Union (1999), the European Commission defined competitiveness as “the ability of companies, industries, regions, nations and supra-national regions to generate, while being exposed to international competition, relatively high income and employment levels.”
- 11.
Krugman qualified as a dangerous obsession the tendency to adopt the criterion of competitive rivalry, which is characteristic of the enterprises, to the international trade relations field. (Krugman, 1994).
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Cuadrado-Roura, J.R. (2009). Regional Growth and Regional Policies: Lessons from the Spanish Experience. In: Cuadrado-Roura, J. (eds) Regional Policy, Economic Growth and Convergence. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02178-7_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02178-7_13
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