Since the 1980s, income differences between European Union (EU) states have declined at the same time as regional inequalities within countries have increased (Puga, 2002). Across many states of the EU regional development is increasingly polarized (Overman et al., 2002). Although regional...

Smart specialization has become a hallmark of the EU's Cohesion Policy. Envisaged as a bottom-up initiative identifying local knowledge cores and associated competitive advantages, the operationalization of smart specialization has been rather limited, as a coherent set of analytical tools to...