Cognitive Capital and Islands of Innovation: The Lucas Growth Model from a Regional Perspective

Knowledge triggers regional growth. Evidence suggests that skilled labour force concentrates in islands of innovation, determining an advantage for innovative regions and a challenge for lagging ones.We address the role of knowledge in shaping effective markets for skilled labour. Estimates are based on the Lucas (1988) model, with EVS and EUROSTAT data. The externality driving growth in the model is cognitive capital. Empirical tests show that a higher endowment of cognitive capital generates increasing returns to knowledge, favouring the emergence of islands of innovation; regions with a high endowment of cognitive capital attract knowledge spillovers from neighbours

Forecasting regional growth: the MASST model

Nowadays, forecasting regional growth is not possible without taking into account the recent economic dynamics at national and supranational level. In fact, the particular focus of the European Union on sovereign debts and deficits imposed by the economic slowdown, the macroeconomic trends that emerged as a result of the crisis and, last but not least, new politically sensible decisions concerning the future of the European Union play a role in explaining the remarkable industrial and geographic heterogeneity in the response to the crisis and the persistence of some of the contraction-induced effects in some countries and regions. All this introduces complexity in the way regional economic growth can be modelled for forecasting purposes. The MASST model is a regional econometric growth model built to simulate regional growth scenarios in the medium and long run (typically, over a 15–20‑year time horizon), taking into consideration also macroeconomic aspects; in its estimation step, in fact, it explains regional growth as the result of national macroeconomic trends and regional growth assets at the same time. This paper aims to present the model and its interpretative power by merging national macroeconomic trends and the long-term regional structure. Particular emphasis will be given to the outcomes of two recent simulations for Polish regions

Smart Cities : is It Just a Fad?

This editorial frames the contents of this special issue within the broad context of the smart city literature. In particular, the editorial first argues for the novelty of the smart city concept with respect to previous planning notions. The smart city literature has provided much insight into present-day urban management issues. In this sense, this special issues presents new insights into the following topics: (i) The smart city literature is characterized by remarkable heterogeneity in terms of geographical and disciplinary approaches; (ii) Relevant attention is being paid to the impact of smart city policies; (iii) New findings are presented for the relevance of benchmarking exercises and a first quantitative impact measurement is discussed; (iv) Beyond the new results presented in the Special Issue, ample space is dedicated to the discussion of future challenges for this literature, for both academics and policymaker

Smart cities in Europe

Urban performance depends nowadays not only on the endowment of hard infrastructure, but also, and increasingly so, on the availability and quality of communication and social infrastructure. The concept of “smart city” has been devised to encompass modern urban production factors into a common framework and in particular to interpret the wide diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the last twenty years. The present paper aims at shedding light on the elusive definition of the concept of smart cities. We provide a narrower and clearer definition of this idea and present consistent evidence on the geography of smart cities in the EU27. Our statistical and graphical analysis exploit in depth, for the first time to our knowledge, the most recent version of the Urban Audit dataset. We show that the presence of a creative class, the quality of and attention to the urban environment, the level of education, multimodal accessibility and the use of ICTs for the Public Administration are all positively correlated with urban wealth. This defines a feasible agenda for European smart cities, in order to achieve sustainable development and a better urban landscape

A map of human capital in European cities

Human capital is a fundamental input in modern knowledge-based economies; it increases the individual productivity of workers, while also making their interactions more productive. Moreover, cities are the major loci of innovation. In Europe, evidence suggests that human capital levels are increasing in cities. However, the distribution of human capital shows a widening gap between top performers and laggards. This paper aims to analyse the spatial and relational geography of human capital in European cities. With the use of a novel and comprehensive data set based on the Urban Audit (UA-EUROSTAT), the European Values Study (EVS) and Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) data, we highlight the general spatio-temporal trends in the endowment, distribution, and evolution of European urban human capital. The economic literature on human capital identifies three main dimensions of this concept: namely, formal education; the sectoral composition of the labour force; and creativity. The link between human capital and relational and managerial capital, with particular reference to the functional urban hierarchy, is analysed on the basis of the presence of international and human capital-intensive firms in cities. In the present work we measure human capital along these four dimensions, and assess the extent to which spatial and temporal disparities affect European cities. Our approach is based on ESDA (Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis) and geographical information systems (GIS), while also taking into account the presence of networks among cities. In addition, we also address the time variation of the human capital indicators.The combination of these techniques allows us to provide an insightful analysis of the map of human capital in European cities, to verify its change in space and time, and to provide statistical support for decision makers. The wealth of information gathered by us allows a better understanding and interpretation of the current trends, thus offering a clearer explanation of the different performance levels of European cities, in terms of both human capital accumulation and economic activit

Territorial scenarios in Europe: Growth and disparities beyond the economic crisis

Up to the start of the present economic crisis (2008), Europe was characterized by a clear trend of convergence in the GDP level of European countries, which was able to counterbalance the opposite trend in intra-national disparities that took place in many countries – namely those with a more recent accession to the Union. The economic downturn of the last years, however, has brought this process of convergence to a halt, mainly as a consequence of the tight austerity policies imposed to many southern European countries. This evidence, recognized by the European Union in the last Cohesion Report (“the crisis has reversed the process of convergence of regional GDP per head and unemployment within the EU”) brought to the fore the relevance of macroeconomic policies in regional development. Therefore in this paper, with the help of a newly built macroeconomic and regional forecasting model (MASST), the future of regional convergence / divergence in the EU is explored through four scenarios: a baseline one, recognizing the clear break of the crisis and three exploratory scenarios, depicting in a consistent way three different “territorial” strategies: supporting large metropolises vs. cities of second and third rank, vs. peripheral and lagging regions. Interestingly enough, the “cities” scenario proves to be at the same time the most cohesive and the most expansionary, shedding some doubts on the traditional equity/efficiency trade-off through an intermediate strategy based on the exploitation of a diffused territorial capital. Overall, diverging regional processes are forecasted from now to 2030

Smart City-Regional Governance: A 'Dual Transition'

This paper introduces the concept of ‘dual transition’ in relation to the notion of ‘smartness’ in city-regional governance. This consists of two intersecting dimensions, a broader change in political-economic and societal circumstances which surround city-regions, and a more detailed, local change towards ‘smartness’ in policy practices. Although ‘smart’ seems to have become a somewhat ubiquitous adjective in urban policy, it seeks to project policies that seek to go beyond a one-dimensional ‘growth agenda’ by addressing also the multifaceted quest for social, economic and environmental sustainability. The underlying shift in discourse, rationality and suggested policy responses in both dimensions may be captured by the concept of ‘transition’ in relation to policies and governance. Originally developed in conjunction with broad political-economic regime change, such as post-authoritarian democratisation, the idea of ‘transition’ has also been applied to the more specific concept of sustainability as ‘sustainability transition’