Kristinn Hermannsson (p), Rosario Scandurra , Marcello Graziano

Sabine Sedlacek

Tertiary education activities benefit their host regional economies through a range of channels, such as expenditures, human capital accumulation and knowledge spillovers -–many of which are mediated through students and graduates. Therefore, boosting the local tertiary education sector has been seen as useful tool of regional development and sometimes governments have taken explicit steps to decentralise the provision of tertiary education in order to achieve regional policy aims. Whilst participation rates have been increasing overall, it is not clear whether this has benefitted all regions equally. To analyse this we construct a macropanel of European NUTS-2regions to determine if and how the geography of university activity has evolved between 2002 and 2012 and how this has impacted the local economies. Our results show that to the extent that there is convergence in tertiary activity across Europe, this is driven by lagging countries catching up in terms of overall participation rates. Once this has been controlled for an overall picture of path dependency emerges, with the strongest predictor of success being past success. We further test for the influence of agglomeration of tertiary education on the local economy and find mixed results in terms of human capital accumulation and overall socio-economic outcomes.

Marina Van Geenhuizen, Eryda Listyaningrum (p)

Kristinn Hermannsson

see extended abstract

Verena Radinger-peer, Sabine Sedlacek (p)

Eryda Listyaningrum

see extended abstract