Involving Universities in Regional Upgrading in the Periphery: Lessons from Northern Europe

This chapter presents and discusses two cases of regional upgrading involving public-run universities in two Northern European countries, Norway and the Netherlands. More specifically, it illuminates how academic groups associated with the field of medicine took pro-active steps to establish and further develop regional coalitions which, over time, have resulted in situated learning. The focus on processes of university-regional engagement and mutual satisfaction in a context where universities are pressured to be globally excellent allow lessons to be drawn for regions in Southern Europe. Subtle transfer is nevertheless required to account for universities’ autonomies and organisational ca…

Regional economic cycles and the emergence of sheltered economies in the periphery of the EU

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 the 1960s and 1970s, when growth in European lagging regions was higher than in the core during periods of economic growth, but lagging regions were more affected by economic crises. In this paper we first assess where and when this change has happened and then analyse what are the factors behind the change in the evolution of disparities. We use a 20-year long database, comprising NUTS II regions in…

EU Cohesion Policy (Open Access)