PEARL - Public Economics at Regional and Local Level in Europe

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PEARL IN BRIEF

PEARL is a network of researchers and research institutions that operate in the field of applied public economics and public finance. The main focus of the network is on the regional level of government, which of course includes studying the relationships with local, state, federal (or supra-national) institutions.

The idea of PEARL is to gather various kinds of expertise both from different countries (implying different objectives, economic and institutional constraints) and from different fields of economic analysis (econometrics, public finance and public choice, local and regional economics, macroeconomics). Comparative analyses and transversal studies will be appreciated.

Some subjects of interest are listed below:
- status of regions in fiscal federalism (the latter usually focussing on the local-state-national relations)
- sectoral questions (employment, location of public facilities, infrastructures)
- endogenous formation of regions and its institutional consequences
- constitutional provisions for fiscal autonomy
- growth, convergence and equalization
- enlargement and harmonization of economic and institutional conditions
- regional economic effects of regional and macroeconomic shocks

PEARL organizes seminars concentrating on the above topics in order to spread information as well as to stimulate discussion and cooperation among researchers. The main partners of the PEARL network are Université de Rennes1 (CREM) from France, Government Institute for Economic Research (VATT) from Finland, University of Helsinki (Finland), Université de Fribourg (Switzerland), and University of Tampere (Finland).