Regional participation to Research and Innovation programmes under Next Generation EU : the Portuguese case

The paper aims to investigate regional participation in a new Portuguese Research and Innovation (R&I) programme (so-called 'Agendas for Industrialization') funded by the European Next Generation EU (NGEU). Using a probit model with sample selection and a novel dataset, we find that the distribution of territorial participation to the NGEU-related programme is more similar to that observed for the European Commission's R&I Horizon 2020 programme than for the R&I funds under the Cohesion Policy (2014-2020). Results also show a rural-urban divide in regional participation, which is eventually due to a lack of demand for this type of funding due to the sectoral composition of the economy in less developed regions.