Issue num. 40 of the scientific journal Investigaciones Regionales – Journal of Regional Research is already available online https://investigacionesregionales.org/ This Spring volume contains 7 international and multidisciplinary academic articles, one paper on ‘European Regional Policy’ and another one on ‘Panorama and Debates’, and a couple of book reviews. Sergio Soza-Amigo, Patricio Aroca and José M. Rueda-Cantuche, by using OECD Input-Output tables for the mid-1990’s, beginning and end of the 2000’s, discuss the evolution of their economic and sectoral structures and compare among their structural similarities, measured by their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in purchaser’s power parities (ppp). José Luis Navarro-Espigares, José Aureliano Martín-Segura, César Pérez-López and Guillermo Maraver-Tarifa verify whether political commitment is backed up with action towards meeting the objectives of sustainable development by means of budgetary support for waste management policies. To accomplish this, authors applied the Difference in Differences technique for the period 2002-2012 in the Spanish municipalities. Roldán Andrés-Rosales, Carlos Bustamante Lemus and Giovanna Saraí Ramírez Argumosa analyze the importance of social exclusion and its relationship to economic growth in the main Mexican regions. Based on the information provided by the Mexican Institute for Statistics and Geography (INEGI), the paper uses PCA and spatial data panel techniques. María Concepción Peñate Valentín and María del Carmen Sánchez Carreira analyze the experience on public procurement of innovation (PPI) in Spain from a regional perspective, focused on types, funding, main sectors, areas of development, and results in products and services. Ninety cases are analyzed from an own-made database, in which a similar behaviour among regions is noticed. Agustí Segarra Blanco, using CIS data, analyzes the impact of public support on R&D investment among Catalan firms. The text approaches the analysis from a triple perspective. Firstly, it details the characteristics of Catalan firms that have benefitted from public support for R&D. Secondly, it establishes whether public support fulfills the principle of additionality and stimulates the innovative efforts of Catalan companies. And thirdly, it analyses whether support affects the composition of private investments in R&D. Jackeline Jiménez and Rafael Alvarado examine empirically the relationship between labour productivity and human capital with regional poverty in Ecuador. In order to correct the bias caused by endogeneity and the omission of spatial dependence, authors used regressions with instrumental variables and spatial econometric techniques.

In the section ‘Panorama and Debates’ Majed Atwi, Ramón Barberán, Jesús Mur and Ana Angulo review the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) for the case of CO2, by comparing the results of the cross-sectional estimates with those derived from a panel approach. To this end, authors use data from 182 countries during the period 1992-2011. They found that the EKC hypothesis is acceptable under both approaches, although the estimated turning points in cross-sections seem unreliable, which underlines the importance of adequately address central problems such as heterogeneity, structural breaks and spatial interaction.

Finally, in the section ‘European Regional Policy’ Julian Ramajo and Miguel A. Márquez provide an exploratory analysis of the economic effects of various Operational Programs implemented in Extremadura, the only Spanish region that, in the context of the European Cohesion Policy, still remains in the group of less developed regions (with a per capita income lower than 75% of the European average).