Coordinated (or ‘joined-up’) approaches to policy making are said to be an immensely important ingredient in the effective governance of sustainable development. There are, however, few detailed empirical studies of how well different policy coordination instruments perform in relation to...

Procedures for the ex ante assessment of public policies are currently in vogue across the OECD. Their design is typically informed by a rational-instrumental model of problem solving, which assumes that knowledge is collected, evaluated, and then translated straightforwardly into ‘better...

Environmental decisions made by individuals, civil society, and the state involve questions of economic efficiency, environmental effectiveness, equity, and political legitimacy. These four criteria are constitutive of the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable...

Subsidiarity, the principle which says that action should be taken at the lowest effective level of governance, is a potentially powerful concept around which a debate about the optimal assignment of tasks across different administrative levels of the European Union (EU) could be constructed....

This paper deals with the relationship between decentralisation, regional economic development, and income inequality within regions. Using multiplicative interaction models and regionally aggregated microeconomic data for more than 100 000 individuals in the European Union (EU), it addresses...

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The creative industries have long been seen as an innovative sector. More recent research posits that creative occupations are also a fundamental, but overlooked, driver of innovation. Theory also suggests cities are important for both creative industries and occupations, with urban environments...

British regions are becoming increasingly culturally diverse, with migration as the main driver. Does this diversity benefit local economies? This research examines the impact of cultural diversity on the entrepreneurial performance of UK regions. We focus on two largely overlooked factors: the...

In this paper we challenge the ability of the conventional methods initiated by Barro and Sala-i-Martin in the early 1990s to detect actual convergence or divergence trends across countries or regions and suggest an alternative dynamic framework of analysis, which allows for a better...

Small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) are increasingly regarded as engines of innovative activity, especially in some of the most dynamic local areas in Western Europe. However, most SMEs lack the adequate resources to conduct research and development (R & D), which is traditionally considered as...