O47 - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output ConvergenceReturn

The convergence of economic level across regions is nowadays discussed especially in association with the efficiency of the EU Cohesion policy. This is the reason why many researchers investigate economic convergence only in a short term, during the last few decades. It is also caused by the lack of historical statistical data for regional levels. We solved this problem atypically by using reconstructed historical regional data that allow us to investigate the convergence in a long term. In this paper, we focus on Beta-convergence of Italian regions using real per capita GDP. The time series consists of reconstructed historical regional data for the period 1891–2009 and regional data from ISTAT for the period 1995–2016. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the process of Beta-convergence across Italian regions in the period 1891–2016 through spatial econometric analysis considering different political background. We used cross-sectional analysis which was extended by the spatial lag model through spatial weights matrix. The whole period was divided into shorter time spans according to the important milestones in the Italian history. We found out that there were times of regional convergence, divergence and stagnation. There are two most remarkable periods: the divergence era which started at the beginning of WWI and continued through interwar period until the end of WWII and the convergence era during miracolo economico italiano in the 1950s and 1960s.

Civil aviation services have become serious demand generating tools for all geographic locations. Understanding the economic conditions which make this demand increase possible, knowledge on external benefits and costs of the growth of international aviation sector plays critical role for the companies and countries which are keen on being competitive and economic growth. Improvements in aviation sector create base for analysing the legal context of air transport deeper and therefore companies in aviation sector analyse the market behaviour and take their position accordingly. Liberalisation of the aviation sector is another factor which triggers the demand increase. Liberalisation of the aviation sector in Turkey dates back to 2003. Since then with the help of increasing competition and decreasing costs together with increasing gross domestic product per capita gave rise to incrase in number of passengers. Domestic and international passengers carried in 2000 was approximately 35 million in Turkey however this number is almost increased to 174 milllion by the end of 2016. Therefore this study is aimed to investigate the underlying dynamics of that rapid increase and 1960-2016 annual data of number of passangers carrried both domestic and internationally together with gross domestic product. Within the scope of econometric analysis, stagnation of data is tested through ADF (Augmented Dickey-Fuller) unit root test. Variables are investigated whether they are cointegrated with Granger method and it is found that variables are cointegrated and long-run balanced relationship found between each other. After conducting Granger causality analysis it is found that there is a bi-directional causality relationship exist from gross domestic product per capita to number of passengers carried. Morever through regression analysis it is found that 1 dollar increase in gross domestic product per capita results 11873 increase in number of passengers carried with %5 significance level.

Innovation and innovation potential of the regions have played the key role for regional competitiveness. Hence the prime objective of the paper is to investigate evaluation of innovations using multi-criteria model, namely the Regional competitiveness Index (RCI) developed in 2010 by the Research Centre of European Commission for the purpose of regional competitiveness measurement of the EU regions at the NUTS 2 level. However, the model is still relatively unverified. Thus the paper finds out to what extend this measure is applicable in the regions at level NUTS 3. The indicators characterizing innovation potential of the region are revealed using multivariate analysis (namely principal component analysis). The evaluation compares mutual level of innovations in individual regions along with their development in years 2004 - 2009. The results of this paper will be used for construction of a holistic RCI model and for overall evaluation of competitiveness of regions in the Czech Republic.