The impact of structural funds of the European Union (EU) on regional economic growth is a matter of both political and economic importance. The large and regular payments made across the EU to countries and regions within them were and are meant to promote various aspects of growth and...

We discuss regional disparities in economic performance and living standards. We first set out some key facts, and provide a conceptual framework to help analyze whether such disparities are efficient, or instead reflect market and/or policy failures. We examine whether policy attempts to reduce...

The purpose of the current paper is to analyze the impact of regional potentials on the process of growth. How are different types of regions (e.g. medium sized [city] regions, rural regions, urban regions or metropolitan and high-tech cluster regions) affected by improved performance, and to...

Williamson (1965) argued that catching up countries experiencing strong national growth tend also to see a widening in regional disparities, whereas in more developed economies strong national growth and falling regional disparities could go hand in hand. We find some evidence of a trade-off...

This paper carries out an explanatory investigation into the relationship between social and institutional contextual factors and economic growth in the Italian regions. We construct a three-sector semi-endogenous growth model with negative externalities depending on social and institutional...

The influence of general economic and fiscal policy is in recent years more significant than ever. Tight budgets sets limits on public spending in general and on regional development in particular, both with regard to programs specifically targeted on regional issue, but often also indirect due...

We use a dynamic model to study the effects of technology and learning on the long run economic growth rates of a leading and a lagging region. New technologies are developed in the leading region but technological improvements in the lagging region are the result of learning from the leading...

A major objective of this study is to analyse the evolutionary patterns of regional linkages and disparities across the EU space, especially those related to rural and peripheral/remote regions. In particular, this report assesses the economy-wide effects, in terms of GDP and employment,...

Many studies have focused on spatial patterns in economic growth. For the case of Europe, these studies have indicated that growth is spatially dependent and that clustering as well as de-clustering are parts of economic development processes. The distribution dynamics approach has revealed...