Abstract
This study observes the relationship between employment policies and the evolution of the productive system, applying the theoretical framework of local development to an average-sized town in a semi-peripheral area of the European Union, during the period from 1975 to 2015. To do so, a case analysis was made of the outcomes of employment policies via their effects on the variables impacting on the productive fabric. The following data sources were used: grey literature related to public policies; published statistics on demographic variables and economic activity; and local press reports. The following results were obtained: (a) the responses of economic agents owe more to the changes in the international scenario than to employment policies; (b) it is essential to analyse the evolution of demographic factors to properly interpret the relationship between labour supply and demand. We conclude that (a) corporate culture significantly influences the success or otherwise of employment policies, and (b) in the semi-peripheral area discussed, unemployment is an endemic problem that successive cohesion and employment policies have failed to resolve. Therefore, the use of innovation-oriented theoretical and practical approaches should be reconsidered.
Highlights
We focus on Antequera, a medium-sized town in Andalusia (41,318 inhabitants [2], Figure 1) which can be considered significant in several respects
Among the authors who have considered the role of this factor in local development, we examine Dematteis and Governa [26] in particular as excellent exponents of how business culture interacts with proposition 1.1 of our first hypothesis, that is, the fundamentals of the space-time matrix [11]
Our study reveals the drag of inertia on the productive fabric in the study area, hindering innovation, as observed, too, by Arenas for the region of Andalusia
Summary
Andalusia (Spain), an Extractive Economy with Low-Quality. The aim of this research study is to observe the relationship between employment policies and the medium-term evolution of the productive system during the 40 years from to 2015. The explanatory factor taken is that of public policies, the spatial context is a medium-sized town in a semi-peripheral region of the European Union and the theoretical framework corresponds to the field of local development. The Spanish region of Andalusia is highly illustrative of the (in)capacity of employment policies to resolve the problem of unemployment. Like the coyote and the roadrunner, locked in endless pursuit, the growth in absolute terms in the number of persons employed has been relentlessly accompanied by a parallel growth in the number of unemployed. According to population census data (our use of which is justified in the Materials and Methods section), between 1981 and 2011, the local population increased by 29.5 points (from 6,441,150 to 8,343,655 inhabitants) and the active population by 124.5 points
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