Smart specialization strategies are a new EU approach to cohesion policy, meant to deliver growth and development at EU national and regional level. Bearing in mind its focus on place-based development strategies, this paper intends to shed some light on its appropriateness to tackle uneven...

The book is aimed at a wide audience, including academics, economic geography, spatial planning and regional policy researchers, institutional leaders and managers, national and institutional policy makers, practitioners, administrators, master's and senior bachelor's students on related...

The financial crisis affected regions in Europe in a different magnitude. This is why we examine whether regions which incorporate banks with a higher intermediation quality grow faster in “normal” times and are more resilient in “bad” ones. For this purpose, we measure the...