Abstract
This paper investigates the territorial capital endowments across European regions. Data are collected at NUTS 2 level for all European regions, for the most recent year available, for several indicators that measure different components of territorial capital. Our evidence reveals several patterns of regional economic development, with specific configurations of the territorial assets, which further shed light on the connection between location, competitiveness and development.
Highlights
A competitive position can originate in multiple sources – managerial prowess, market structure, governmental intervention, or technological breakthrough, but one general term suffices to encapsulate them all: a favorable environment, internal and external to the company
It is about who are supposed to benefit, the local social and economic subjects – easy to spot in industrial districts or administrative units, but difficult in regions of variable geometry; who is supposed to assume policy-making, the local institutions – Ackrill and Kay (2011, p. 75) define the term ‘institutional ambiguity’ referring to a policy-making environment of overlapping institutions lacking a clear hierarchy; over which territorial confines, the economic boundaries – the regional area for the best conditions of competitive development on a regional basis, that is, an area sufficiently large to allow for efficient levels of production, but fittingly small to capitalize on its specific territorial assets
When a certain level of detail is imprinted on a map, which is scaled at geographically relevant size, that map may inspire practical action. This has been at least the premise of this paper – to work with location-specific data to highlight policy issues regarding the spatial distribution of territorial assets
Summary
A competitive position can originate in multiple sources – managerial prowess, market structure, governmental intervention, or technological breakthrough, but one general term suffices to encapsulate them all: a favorable environment, internal and external to the company. Reviews inform regularly on the progress that has been made in regional policy development for domains such as environment, culture, innovation, energy or transportation; on its part, empirical evidence has been accumulating to defend the hypothesis regarding the positive role of territorial factors in supporting growth and competitive performance Relevant though they may be, were we to join all pieces together in an articulated mechanism, we would soon have to confront two impenetrable issues: benefits for whom and within what territorial confines?. Data are processed through a statistical cluster analysis to show how regions group themselves together based on similar territorial endowments All this evidence reveals several patterns of regional economic development, with specific configurations of territorial assets, which further shed light on the connection between location and competitiveness and development. We describe a panoramic view of the conditions of geographic distribution of territorial capital in the EU that sheds light on the premises underlying the application of the conceptual trio in policy-making
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