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The economic growth literature suggests that knowledge spillovers are subject to distance decay effects. In this paper the main aim is to provide a theoretical framework and empirical evidence on the role played by other kinds of proximities, namely relational, social and technological proximity, in explaining productivity growth. Using a sample of 249 EU 27 NUTS 2 regions in the period 1990–2004, semiparametric spatial autoregressive models are estimated. Results provide evidence of a positive role of social and relational proximities as important channels of knowledge spillovers, and on the fact that, when simultaneously present, different kinds of proximities generate synergic effects on growth

In the last 15 years, empirical evidence has emerged about the fact that European first-rank cities have not always led national economic performance, and when they did, the difference between first- and second-rank cities in explaining national growth has not been significant. A recent work [Dijkstra, L., Garcilazo, E. & McCann, P. (2013) The economic performance of European cities and city regions: Myths and realities, European Planning Studies, 21(3), pp. 334–354] claims that second-rank cities have in fact outperformed first-rank cities, becoming the main driving forces in national economic performance. In the debate that emphasizes the role of second-rank cities in national growth, a simplified view of the role of agglomeration economies is provided; they are taken for granted in small- and medium-sized cities and only in large cities will the problem of a downturn in urban returns to scale emerge. In this paper, a more complex view is assumed, claiming that the oversimplified interpretation that urban economic performance simply depends on the exploitation of agglomeration economies and that these agglomeration economies merely depend on urban size alone should be abandoned. Some already existing theoretical frameworks in urban economics can help in recalling the role of possible bifurcations in the development path of cities, linked to the capability to attract or develop new and higher-order functions, increase internal efficiency and reach scale economies through cooperation networks with other cities (the city-network theory). All these elements work as conditions for fully exploiting agglomeration economies and ways to overcome urban decreasing returns

Knowledge drives the growth of nations and regions in a competitive space-economy. Hence, we would expect a strong correlation between investments in R&D, knowledge and learning processes, on the one hand, and productivity increases, on the other. However, the empirical evidence shows consistent discrepancies between knowledge inputs and economic performance across geographical units. This paper addresses this intriguing issue at the regional level, by highlighting theoretically and empirically the strategic importance played by intangible elements as part of "territorial capital" in mediating between knowledge production and regional growth. The main proposition of the paper, subject to empirical testing, is that intangible elements as part of territorial capital magnify the contribution of knowledge by determining the formation of increasing returns to knowledge exploitation.

We design a conceptual framework for linking two approaches: absorptive capacity and spatial Knowledge Spillovers (KSs). Regions produce new knowledge, but only part of it is efficiently adopted in the economy; the share of efficiently adopted technology depends on cognitive capital. Our dataset is based on a panel of European regions over the period 1999 to 2006, combining data from EUROSTAT and the European Values Study (EVS). We test the hypothesis that insufficient levels of cognitive capital hamper the capability of regions to fully exploit new knowledge. Results show that a lower regional absorptive capacity increases KS towards surrounding areas, hampering the regions’ capability to decode and efficiently exploit new knowledge, both locally produced and originating from outside

This article adds to the empirical evidence on the impact of agglomeration externalities on regional growth along three main dimensions. On the basis of data on 259 Europe NUTS2 (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) regions and 15 NACE (Nomenclature statistique des Activités économiques dans la Communauté Européenne) 1.1 2-digit industries for the period 1990–2007, we show that agglomeration externalities are stronger in technology-intensive industries, also after controlling for sorting; that specialization externalities are stronger for low density regions, while diversity matters more for denser urban areas; and, finally, that Jacobs externalities comprise a pure diversification effect (related variety) and a portfolio effect (unrelated variety), although evidence of positive effects on regional growth is only found for the latter. An additional contribution of this article is to extend the analysis on the basis of a full geographical coverage of European NUTS2 regions, with the aim to generalize the empirical identification of the impacts of specialization and diversification externalities with respect to the existing literature. Our results are robust to a rich set of consistency checks, including the use of spatial autoregressive models with autoregressive disturbances, used to assess to what extent the effects of agglomeration externalities are localized