What can the EMU’s peripheral countries learn from regional growth?

The experiences of 259 regions in 21 European countries with within country GDP per capita and labour productivity growth suggest that variables associated with pro-active, growth oriented strategies are consistently more important predictors of successful regional development than variables related to austerity for a range of measures of successful development. Since regions are the only historical examples of restructuring in currency unions, we therefore also argue for a more growth oriented strategy to solve the problems of the European periphery and outline some features of such a strategy.