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This paper considers the 2001 income mosaic of Greece at the local level. It constructs a model based on occupational, territorial, and demographic factors to isolate their impact on declared income and study clusters of income at the disaggregated territorial level. The new cluster-based spatial specification provides a better econometric fit compared to the specification based on the existing official regional framework. This suggests that the economy does not operate according to the country's administrative divisions, but rather according to local-specific factors and transportation linkages, as is the case in a fragmented land united by its transportation network. Accordingly, if income disparities are larger within rather than between administrative regions, regional economic development policy might best be conducted within a functional-area framework rather than the current administrative-region framework. These findings entail important policy implications for EU regional development and resource allocation, and are also useful in additional tentative policy proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at mapping and analyzing the determinants of industrial activity in Greek regions in order to assess current investment patterns. For this purpose, we estimate a conditional logit model of 226 new established firms for 1996 and 1997. Results give interesting insights that are likely of particular importance to regional policy makers. Noteworthy is the spatial concentration of firms in different prefectures while the large metropolitan cities, Athens and Thessalonica, although with declining shares, prevail as the dominant hosts. European regional policy seems to enhance firms’entry via its effect on economic development variables, in contrast with the Greek Development Law, which turns out non-influential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the effect of the spatial context upon entrepreneurship in Greek regions. Cross-sectional data referring to 4151 births at NUTS III level (prefecture) are used for firm births in four industries, namely manufacturing, commerce, services, and tourism. The formulated hypotheses are in regard to the effect of agglomeration economies, defined here as urbanization and localization economies, and other factors that typically affect the location of start-ups. Results indicate that strong localization economies exist (both of the Marshallian and the Jacobian type) while, in addition, the spatial context of entrepreneurship affects different industries in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to test regional convergence and to investigate interregional disparities in terms of per capita income in Greece. The novelty of our study lies in the use of a disaggregated dataset for an extended time period (1971–2003) at two regional levels (NUTS II & NUTS III). Our results indicate that there is β convergence between prefectures but not among regions, while no evidence of σ convergence is found at both regional levels. Also, the GDP geographic concentration and population density have a negative impact on growth, which outweighs the positive growth effect of population geographic concentration and GDP spatial inequality. Thus, policies aiming at the decentralization of economic activity in Greece might enhance growth and regional equality simultaneously. Finally, we do not find economic dualism across geographic areas; however, rich prefectures seem to converge faster than poor ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A three-area interregional Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) model is used to analyze economic interdependencies and relevant diffusion patterns within and between rural-urban localities in Southern Greece: the rural areas of Archanes and N. Kazantzakis and the urban area of Heraklion. Both rural areas trickle significant economic benefits to the urban area, while the urban area has marginal linkages with them. Policy simulation analysis results have indicated that farm income support measures are important to Archanes, since reduced spending in farm income support creates significant negative impacts on firm and household income, and is not compensated by an equivalent increase in rural development policy spending. These findings do not hold for the diffusion of economic impacts towards N. Kazantzakis and Heraklion; results of this simulation show that positive economic benefits are still diffused to both the wealthier urban area and the adjacent poorer rural area of N. Kazantzakis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]