Silvia Cerisola (p), Roberto Camagni , Roberta Capello

EUSALP (EU Strategy for the ALPine region) is the fourth European macro-regional strategy, officially established in 2015. It includes regions with contrasted demographic, social and economic trends and a great cultural and linguistic diversity. This diversity goes along with a great variety of governance systems and traditions. Thus, EUSALP constitutes a strategic agenda that should guide relevant policy instruments at the EU, national and regional levels.

Drawing on the belief that both the common specificities of the Alpine area and its variety and diversity call for cooperation, this work aims at highlighting the strategies that should be developed for its growth. In particular, a fine level of geographical disaggregation (NUTS3) is exploited to achieve such goal through:
- the conceptual definition of specific development
patterns and of the related strategic resources (success
factors);
- the identification of (pattern specific) needs for local
development through the analysis of the endowment of
strategic assets;
- the identification of (pattern specific) success factors for
local development, linking strategic assets to
performance;
- the identification of (pattern specific) efficiency sources,
through the analysis of the degree of efficiency in
exploiting strategic resources and the estimation of a
growth model measuring whether a particular
development pattern uses its resources more efficiently
than the average; and
- the identification of complementarities of resources and
functions within the macro-region, through the analysis
of the (potential) spillover effects within and between
development patterns.

Finally, on the basis of the analysis, the work provides policy suggestions meant to improve cooperation in the Alpine States as well as to define common objectives and to achieve them more effectively through transnational collaboration.

Carrying out the work outlined above requires the building of a detailed database at NUTS3 level, including variables on structural (stock) elements and regional performance.

Sylvie Charlot (p), Antonio Musolesi

The main policy instruments of the EU to develop its system of innovation are the Framework Programmes (FPs) on Research and Technological Development (RTD). This paper aims at assessing the impact of the different EU policies – those which try to reduce regional inequality and those which aim at enhancing the innovative process - on regional innovation. Using a panel data set covering 218 regions of the entire EU-27 and the period 1995-2012, we implement a non-parametric estimator to evaluate the impact of these policies. The non-parametric approach allows taking into account the unobserved heterogeneity of regions that may affect innovation. It also controls for the endogeneity of the policies, as well as of R&D spending and of human capital (HK), especially endogeneity linked to sorting biases in a mobility context. Moreover, the non-parametric approach permits flexible relationships between European policies and regional innovation and also complementarity between different policies and innovation factors.
Our first results highlight these complementarity, by isolating the specific effects of each policy, as well as their interacting effects. We show that, in some cases, regional hysteresis is too high, especially in terms of the agglomeration of innovative factors, to make policies able to fight against these cumulative competitive advantages. Finally, the efficiency of European policies is analyzed in this context, by balacing their general cost and their impact on innovation.

Laura Ciucci (p)

The purpose of this research is to explore the role played by universities in explaining local innovation performance. This topic seems particularly relevant in the contemporary knowledge-based economy (Goldstein, 2009; Huggins and Kitagawa, 2009; Cowan and Zinovyeva, 2013). In fact, innovation policies, either at regional, national or European level, which have been at the top of decision-makers' agenda for many years now, emphasize increasingly the importance of the university-industry relationships and the valorization of academic research results (Lambert Review of University-Business Interaction, 2003; Law on innovation and research in France, 1999). As a direct consequence, in a large number of countries, beside the classical teaching and research activities, universities are now deputed to foster the so-called “Third Mission” (Perkmann et al., 2013; Etzkowitz, 2002).
This phenomenon has been frequently analyzed in the academic literature. Recently the European Commission has published a report about the impact of European universities on their regional innovation ecosystem. This study aims to build up an innovation performance system in order to allocate resources and funds among the universities at European level (Jonkers et al., 2018).
With this framework in mind, the paper’s aim is to investigate the extent to which universities can affect the local innovation ecosystem, especially through technological and knowledge transfer activities (patents, licenses, spinoffs, research and consulting contracts…) which have dramatically increased during the last decades (D’Este and Iammarino, 2010; Fisher et al. 2009). The activities of academic knowledge and technologies transfer present a double benefit: on the one hand, they can generate adjunctive resources for universities, which suffer from public grants decline in many European countries; on the other hand, they could contribute to reinforce university-industry collaborations and to invest in research projects in line with local demand and needs, allowing the society to benefit from public research outputs.
In order to address this issue, an econometric analysis is proposed using a panel of Italian Provinces (NUTS 3). Employing a set of covariates which control for both university and province characteristics, we try to estimate the impact of Technology Transfer Offices on local innovation performance.

Amaia Altuzarra , Ricardo Bustillo (p), Carlos Rodriguez

In this paper, we analyse world and other regions’ trade and output figures using an error correction model (ECM) to shed light about the so-called global trade slowdown phenomenon.
We use annual observations of GDP and good imports (in real terms) and the estimation period is 1970-2015. Variables come from the IMF economic outlook and 2005 is the base year. We perform our analysis for four different groups of regional areas, separately: the whole world (i), Euro area (ii), developing and emerging countries (iii), developing and emerging Asian countries (iv) (see appendix 1 for concrete countries in each group). Our econometric strategy consists of estimating the long-run equilibrium relationship and the short-run adjustment dynamics between global income (GDP) and trade volumes (proxied by good imports). In order to do so, we use a cointegration procedure with structural breaks. We apply a battery of unit root tests without and with structural breaks to find out the order of integration of these two variables. The methodology used to deal with the short and long run dynamics of those variables is the procedure in two steps proposed by Engle and Granger (1987) .
We confirm for the period 1970-2011 the existence of the above-mentioned stylized fact. As far as the decline in trade elasticity has only been observed in the long run relationship, we can infer that the so called structural factors (changes in trade policies or in the global value chain, …) explaining this phenomenon are the relevant ones. Results regarding data in different world regions reveal that despite Euro area lower long run elasticities before the financial crisis, they also fell sharply after 2008. Moreover, developing and emerging countries’ higher elasticities decreased from 2008 onwards, in line with the world trend.