A Generalized Model of Regional Economic Growth in the European Union

Understanding the forces driving regional growth in the EU is a major challenge for theory and policy. The opening of national borders, together with the rapid technological and scientific progress, has exposed regional economies to an extremely competitive, free-market, integrated economic environment, affecting their patterns of development. EU regions should, thus, be understood not only as national, geographic and administrative sub-divisions, but also as integral parts of the EU economic space. The paper develops a generalized econometric model for the investigation of the determinants of regional economic growth in 249 EU NUTS II regions, for the period 1990-2003. The model provides critical insight with important implications for theory and policy.