Determinants of intraregional migration in Sub-Saharan Africa 1980-2000

Despite great accomplishments in the migration literature, the determinants of South-South migration remain poorly understood. In an attempt to fill this gap, this paper formulates and tests an empirical model for intraregional migration in sub-Saharan Africa within an extended human capital framework, taking into account spatial interaction. Using bilateral panel data between 1980 and 2000, we find that intraregional migration on the subcontinent is predominantly driven by economic opportunities and sociopolitics in the host country, facilitated by geographical proximity. The role played by network effects and environmental conditions is also apparent. Finally, origin and destination spatial dependence should definitely not be ignored

Short-Run Regional Forecasts: Spatial Models through Varying Cross-Sectional and Temporal Dimensions

In any economic analysis, regions or municipalities should not be regarded as isolated spatial units, but rather as highly interrelated small open economies. These spatial interrelations must be considered also when the aim is to forecast economic variables. For example, policy makers need accurate forecasts of the unemployment evolution in order to design short- or long-run local welfare policies. These predictions should then consider the spatial interrelations and dynamics of regional unemployment. In addition, a number of papers have demonstrated the improvement in the reliability of long-run forecasts when spatial dependence is accounted for. We estimate a heterogeneouscoefficients dynamic panel model employing a spatial filter in order to account for spatial heterogeneity and/or spatial autocorrelation in both the levels and the dynamics of unemployment, as well as a spatial vector-autoregressive (SVAR) model. We compare the short-run forecasting performance of these methods, and in particular, we carry out a sensitivity analysis in order to investigate if different number and size of the administrative regions influence their relative forecasting performance. We compute short-run unemployment forecasts in two countries with different administrative territorial divisions and data frequency: Switzerland (26 regions, monthly data for 34 years) and Spain (47 regions, quarterly data for 32 years)

Decentralization and regional government size in Spain

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of fiscal decen- tralization on the size of regional governments in Spain, by controlling for economies of scale, interregional heterogeneity and institutional framework. We study it over 1985 to 2004 using a panel dataset of seventeen spanish regions. The results can be easily summarized. Firstly, it supports the classic public goods theory of a trade-off-between the economic benefits of size and the costs of heterogeneity. Secondly, it doesn’t reject the “Leviathan” hypoth- esis and neither does the “common pool” hypothesis. Thirdly, by contrast, the paper partly rejects the “Wallis”’ hypothesis. It argues that government size is mediated by financial resources obtained through intergovernmental grants, consistent with welfare economics and positive economic policies. We conclude that later advances in the decentralisation process must be compatible with the goal of reducing fiscal imbalances that emanate from the vertical structure of fiscal power.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio