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...

Innovations and the capacity to innovate are crucial factors for regional development. Regional growth is not an exogenous or independent phenomenon, but more or less ‘derived’ from the ability of the local business to perform and generate income. For this reason, attention has been on the...

Innovation and entrepreneurship are key factors in current regional development initiatives, derived from the concepts of new economic growth theory. The aim of this paper is to combine an assessment of innovative and entrepreneurial performance with the spatial distribution and functional...

The spatial patterns of changes in economic diversion and convergence have become more blurred in the last decades. International disparities between nations have diminished. At the same time intra-national disparities have increased in most European countries. In the search to identify the...

Spatial aspects of economic and social cohesion have become a major target in European policy in the last decades. By combining the structural funds with spatial development perspectives, the recently introduced concept of territorial cohesion obviously functions as link between EU regional...

Perhaps the most exceptional aspect of the current era of globalisation is that entrepreneurship has become the engine for local processes of economic, social and cultural development throughout the world. This important new book brings together a number of leading scholars in the field to...

This book presents new evidence concerning the influential role of context and institutions on the relations between knowledge, innovation, clusters and learning. From a truly international perspective, the expert contributors capture the most interesting and relevant aspects of knowledge economy.

The contributions in this volume extend our understanding about the different ways distance impacts the knowledge conversion process. Knowledge itself is a raw input into the innovation process which can then transform it into an economically useful output such as prototypes, patents, licences...

A new regional balance: Challenges and opportunities for intermediate city regions in Europe. The regional landscape in Europe has changed during the last decades. After a period of conversion, processes of diversion has reentered the scene. In the aftermath of the economic crisis South European...