The growth of business services and the economic cycle

Business services have become one of the most dynamic activities in modern economies. Their high growth rates in value added and employment support its outstanding position. The paper identifies short-term cyclical and long-term structural components in the business services growth. The relationship between business services and the economic cycle and the wide spectrum of reasons explaining structural growth are also analysed. The conclusions point out the importance of business services for economic progress of current economies. It seems that the structural component is more relevant than the cyclical one. The available data for some main OECD countries show that there is still a potential margin for further structural growth for business services. Some policies implications can be drawn from all this.

Strategy and Coherence of a Program of Regional Development: A Methodology for synergy evaluation

The main purpose of this paper is to present a methodological proposal to value the synergy in programmes of regional development, regarding either their objectives or their performances. First, the main aspects of the methodology used to evaluate individually the synergy of the objectives (performances) are set out by using a Delphi technique. This technique allows to build a matrix of weights, according to the degree of synergy for every objective (performance). Then, hierarchical clusters are applied in the data processing. This technique leads to a ranking of objectives which shows the strategic value of the programme subject to evaluation. The methodological analysis shows also an application of the Community Support Framework ( 1994-1999) for the Spanish Objective 1 regions.

Internationalisation of services

Main ways to internationalisation: international trade of services and crossed direct investmen