Infrastructure and Education as Instruments of Regional Policy: Evidence from Spain
利用西班牙数据，考察教育和基础设施投资对区域经济差异的影响，发现人力资本和公共资本存量差异解释了约三分之一的区域不平等，但基础设施投资因分配不均对区域收敛贡献有限。
Regional policy and Spain infrastructure and education as instruments of regional policy: evidence from Spain Governments have often tried to influence the regional distribution of economic activity through supply-side measures such as investment in training and infrastructure. Using evidence from Spain, we examine whether such policies can have an impact and whether they have done so in the past. Our results indicate that disparities in the stocks of human and public capital account for a third of observed regional inequality, about evenly split between the two factors. Hence public investment can in principle be used to reduce regional disparity. Its actual impact, however, will depend both on its overall volume and on the extent to which its regional allocation does indeed vary with regional need. In Spain, investment in infrastructure has made only a small contribution to regional convergence, primarily because it has not in practice been allocated to redistribute across regions to any great extent. In contrast, EFRD transfers have clearly been allocated among regions with redistribution in mind. The impact of the Fund has been significant, but it has been limited by the relatively small size of the programme. — Angel de la Fuente and Xavier Vives