The diffusion of new technologies is often mediated by spatial and socioeconomic factors. This article empirically examines the diffusion of an important renewable energy technology: residential solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. Using detailed data on PV installations in Connecticut, we identify the spatial patterns of diffusion, which indicate considerable clustering of adoptions. This cluster…

To date, theoretical and empirical insights in the determinants of regional resilience are still limited. Using a model, we explore how three regional factors jointly contribute to the resilience of regional labour markets to economic shocks. The localization of the supply network (1) is used to model the propagation of the shock, while possibilities for intersectoral (2) and interregional lab…

This article aims to shed light on how institutions shape innovative capacity, by focusing on how regional government quality affects innovative performance in the regions of Europe. By exploiting new data on quality of government, we assess how government quality and its components (control of corruption, rule of law, government effectiveness and government accountability) shape patenting acro…

Our article contributes to the emerging micro-level strand of the literature on the link between local variations in weather shocks and conflicts by focusing on a pixel-level analysis for North and South Sudan between 1997 and 2009. Temperature anomalies are found to strongly affect the risk of conflict, whereas the risk is expected to magnify in a range of 24�31% in the future under a me…

We document the spatial diffusion of Friedrich Froebel�s radical invention of kindergartens in 19th-century Germany. The first kindergarten was founded at Froebel�s birthplace. Early spatial diffusion can be explained by cultural proximity, measured by historical dialect similarity, to Froebel�s birthplace. This result is robust to the inclusion of higher order polynomials in ge…

Using data on 418 Norwegian firms, the results confirm the hypotheses that innovative/ radically innovative firms tend to be more involved in international personal and formal networks than non-innovative/ incrementally innovative ones. While regional and national networks are much more widespread than international ones, they are not significantly positively associated with innovation. Intern…

This article examines home bias in U.S. domestic trade in 1949 and 2007. We use a unique data set of 1949 carload waybill statistics produced by the Interstate Commerce Commission, and 2007 Commodity Flow Survey data. The results show that home bias was considerably smaller in 1949 than in 2007 and that home bias in 1949 was even negative for several commodities. We argue that the difference be…

This article reanalyses data used by Reinhart and Rogoff (2010c, American Economic Review, 100: 573�78�RR), and later Herndon et al. (2013, Cambridge Journal of Economics, online, doi: 10.1093/cje/bet075) to consider the relationship between growth and debt in developed countries. The consistency over countries and the causal direction of RR�s so called �stylised fact�…

We develop a method to screen for local cartels. We first test whether there is statistical evidence of clustering of outlets that score high on some characteristic that is consistent with collusive behavior. If so, we determine in a second step the most suspicious regions where further antitrust investigation would be warranted. We apply our method to build a variance screen for the Dutch gaso…

The article accounts for the determinants of sectoral specialisation in business services (BS) across the EU-27 regions as determined by: (i) agglomeration economies (ii) the region-specific structure of intermediate linkages (iii) technological innovation and knowledge intensity and (iv) the presence of these factors in neighbouring regions. The empirical analysis draws upon the REGIO panel da…