The paper presents the second step of an ambitious research project, which has the aim to provide territorial scenarios of the New Europe in 15 years, developed under different hypotheses on the most important driving forces of change in the fields of economy, demographic, society, technology...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the endogenous factors allowing regions to compete successfully in a globalized economy. These factors are expected to vary across different groups of regions, due to their different specialization and different endowment of structural connections with the...

European regional growth patterns have undergone two important changes in recent years. First, the process of convergence that dominated regional growth until the late 1970s and early 1980s has progressively given way to stability and divergence. Economic dynamism is increasingly concentrated in...

It has been claimed that in recent years the evolution of regional disparities within European nations has become pro-cyclical, that is, disparities tend to increase in times of economic boom and to decrease during recessions. This represents a change with respect to the traditional patterns in...

An important part of modern theory on regional disparities identifies in the innovative activities the source of competitive advantage and, consequently, of the observed differences in economic development. However, since differently from a standard physical factor of production, knowledge can...

A large number of economic models has been developed in the past 15 years in order to explore the causes of endogenous regional growth and the location of economic activities with the consequent differentials of development among territories. At the same time regional policies have undergone...

The aim of the paper is twofold: a) it stresses the concept of collective learning from a theoretical point of view, and provides new insights into its definition; b) it provides a measurement of the presence of collective learning in three Italian milieux. An analysis of the definitions...

The paper presents prima facie evidence of the role of relational capital in innovation activities, and underlines the spatial and sectoral difference of the effects of relational capital on innovation processes. Relational cpaital is defined in this paper as the intensity of information and...

Innovative capacity of firms has traditionally been explained through intra-firm characteristics, being firms size the most important. A wave of empirical studies identifies small firms as the engines of technological change and innovative activity, at least in certain industries. This statement...