Do enforcement institutions matter for economic specialization? : province-level evidence from Spain

Mora-Sanguinetti, Juan S. (author), Spruk, Rok (author)

We test whether enforcement institutions shape regional specialization. Using administrative data for all Spanish provinces (NUTS-3) over 1999–2014 with juris- diction-specific extensions, we measure judicial efficacy by court congestion in administrative and civil courts and identify its causal effect with historical, region- level instruments: foral civil-law stocks and special administrative tax regimes. We find that weaker enforcement shifts specialization away from manufacturing and toward services. In administrative-court specifications, a one standard-deviation increase in congestion rate lowers the manufacturing share by about 12–19% and raisesthe services share by 13–27%. Civil-court effects are smaller but of the same sign. Results are robust to redefining outcomes as complex vs. non-complex activi- ties, aggregating outcomes to NUTS-2, alternative Bartik instrument structures, and identification-robust inference checks. The evidence implies that strengthening judicial enforcement, especially in the administrative jurisdiction, tilts economies toward contract-intensive production and slows premature deindustrialization.

• Language: English
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: EF - School of Economics and Business
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2026
• Number of pages: 37 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 75, article no. ǂ50
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-182128
• UDC: 332.1
• ISSN on article: 0570-1864
• DOI: 10.1007/s00168-026-01479-6
• COBISS.SI-ID: 273674243
• Publication date in RUL: 24.04.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: The annals of regional science
• Shortened title: Ann. reg. sci.
• Publisher: Springer
• ISSN: 0570-1864
• COBISS.SI-ID: 27203840

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: Španija, regionalna politika, regionalna ekonomika, regionalni razvoj