Guadalupe Serrano

Complementarity between Local Knowledge and Internationalization in Regional Technological Progress

Trade, foreign direct investment, and inter-regional R&D spillovers facilitate competition, the spread of knowledge, and the adoption of more advanced technologies, which in turn hastens total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The spread of these efficiency gains from internationalization requires a sufficient local knowledge to enable them to be adapted to the domestic productive environment. Thus, higher local knowledge and internationalization will lead to TFP growth, and the greater the complementarity between variables the higher the TFP growth. We test the complementarity hypothesis using Spanish regional data over the period 1980-1995 in which both regional local knowledge and internationalization experienced a notable increase. Copyright Blackwell Publishing, Inc. 2006

The Effect of Knowledge Spillovers on Productivity Growth Inequalities in Spanish Regions

We investigate the impact of local and foreign forms of knowledge spillover on productivity growth inequalities in Spanish regions. In each sector and region such inequalities will depend on the innovative capacity of the region and on local spillovers emanating from proximity to innovation producers and from the composition of economic activity in the region. Foreign spillovers will be mainly from trade with other regions or countries. Panel estimation results indicate that local sector human capital and specialisation patterns, public-R&D efforts—both local and from other regions—and international technological imports reduce these growth differentials. The regional level of development and sector technological characteristics will qualify these results.

International trade and migrant networks: Is It really about qualifications?

Personal characteristics of migrants could help to strengthen the impact of migrant networks on bilateral trade. While most of the attention has been focused on immigrants’ educational attainment, this paper focuses on the relevance of the tasks carried out by migrants. Our empirical results confirm that the existence of a large number of foreign-born workers with managerial duties is critical to explain the reduction of transaction costs caused by migrant networks.