Liran Maymoni (p), Raphael Bar-El, Sharon Hadad, Ran Ben-Malka, Reut Megidish

Andrea Conte

This study investigates the impact of innovation-led growth on the economic structure of Israel's periphery, analyzing data from 2000 to 2020 on knowledge-based occupations. The findings reveal a notable but insufficient adaptation of the peripheral labour force to the increasing demand for advanced skills, resulting in escalating centre-periphery imbalances and a trend of economic degradation in peripheral areas.

The periphery is shifting towards blue-collar activities, mainly manufacturing, while its participation in innovation diminishes, increasing the centre-periphery gap. Highly skilled workers from the periphery are either commuting or migrating to the centre due to a lack of suitable local opportunities, while unskilled workers fill gaps in the central labour market. This migration pattern threatens to intensify the economic decline of the periphery.

Current policy measures have proven inadequate for integrating the periphery into the national innovation trend. Future policies should focus on improving educational and technological infrastructure, fostering collaborations between firms in different regions, and tailoring innovation to suit the periphery's strengths in land-intensive sectors. These strategies should aim to balance the supply and demand of the labour force while ensuring that innovation is accessible and beneficial to peripheral areas.

The study highlights the need for a multifaceted policy approach that includes strengthening local educational institutions, promoting joint ventures, and supporting innovation in sectors like manufacturing and tourism. Government interventions should be evaluated for their potential economic and social gains, requiring extensive research to identify effective measures. This approach aims to mitigate economic disparities and foster a more inclusive national growth.

Sigrid Jessen (p), Maja Brynteson, Anna Vasilevskaya

Liran Maymoni

Digital transformations has been one of the most visible and significant global changes over the past two decades. The transformation has been pervasive, impacting nearly every aspects of society, economy and daily life. However, not all have equal access to the digitalised society, which causes certain groups to become at risk of digital exclusion. These groups are often already marginalised in society with the digital component adding an additional layer of social and economic exclusion. Exactly, how to develop inclusive innovation policies with and for these marginalised groups still remain an open question.

Recognizing the fundamental role of user-producer interaction in innovation, as established in existing literature (e.g., Lundvall 1984), and acknowledging the dark side of innovation with its socially and geographically uneven consequences, there has been a surge in political attention toward inclusive innovation. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature on inclusive innovation (e.g., Lee 2023), focusing specifically on the emergence of political attention to digital inclusion in the Nordic and Baltic countries and exploring the diverse approaches each country takes.

We analyse all 25 national, political innovation strategies emphasising digital inclusion published in the Nordic and Baltic region over the past two years. We also conduct fieldwork and interviews with key actors at political and civic society levels across all eight countries. This aims to unravel the intricate relationship between the formulation of inclusive innovation policies and their practical implementation, ensuring that these policies genuinely foster digital and innovative inclusion.

While the recent intensification of focus on digital inclusion is evident from the substantial number of new strategies, similarities among the Nordic and Baltic countries reveal a shared understanding. However, the diversity of perspectives emphasizes the necessity for flexible, context-sensitive approaches to address digital inclusion effectively. Interviews across the eight countries highlight a discrepancy between political ambitions and the level of support at the civic societal level, with financial challenges and biased engagement with larger organizations exerting significant influence.

Ezio Micelli, Eleonora Righetto (p), Giulia Giliberto (p)

Sigrid Jessen

Cities are the foundation of states, but their growth paths are not uniform. In Italy, fourteen metropolitan cities have been identified that, with few exceptions, have not taken the lead in the country's development. The research focuses on Italian medium-sized cities to determine whether their evolution is correlated with that of metropolitan cities, particularly after the economic crisis of 2008-2012 and the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020.
In Italy, a much higher percentage of the population lives in medium-sized and suburban centres compared to the European average. The research analysed a ten-year period and considered eighteen medium-sized cities, as well as the second largest city in each region and a number of particularly important cities.
To evaluate the evolution of cities over time, this research analyses real estate values alongside demographic, economic, and infrastructural factors. The statistical method used for the analysis is non-hierarchical cluster analysis.
The results of the research reveal three distinct spatial developments.
In the first, cities that demonstrate positive property and economic values across all sectors tend to experience growth in relation to metropolitan cities. For example, Brescia-Monza with Milan, Modena with Bologna, and Latina with Rome.
Similarly, in the second spatial development, medium-sized cities follow a similar trajectory to metropolitan cities, but with lower economic and demographic signals, especially in the south and central suburbs.
In the third development model, there are medium-sized cities that exhibit significant and positive growth, well above average. These cities are located along well-defined infrastructure axes, such as the Milan-Padua axis, the Via Emilia, and the Brenner axis.
In conclusion, medium-sized cities tend to grow in relation to metropolitan cities. When metropolitan cities do not grow, as in the case of southern cities, medium-sized cities do not take on a substitute role but follow the same trajectory as larger cities.
This research makes an original and innovative contribution to the study of the development of medium-sized cities. It provides a clear analysis of concentration patterns in the Italian urban environment, identifying opportunities for the implementation of sustainable development strategies and for the full utilization of resources crucial to urban growth, such as cognitive and social capital and physical infrastructure.

Andrea Conte (p), Anabela Santos (p), Francesco Molica

Eleonora Righetto

The interconnectedness of EU regions forms the backbone of a prosperous and competitive economy. Reducing regional disparities among EU regions contributes to an inclusive economic growth, ensuring that no one is left behind, while a sustained competitiveness of EU regions is achieved. Innovation plays a pivotal role in reducing economic gaps by fostering growth, driving productivity, and creating opportunities for inclusive development. The papers seeks to understand the drivers of economic divide and innovation divide. The term divide refers to the disparity or gap in economic conditions or innovation capacity between different regions within in EU, measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and R&D expenditure per capita, respectively,. Two measures of gap are reported in the analysis. The first one assesses the distance between the GDP per capita (or R&D intensity) of a region and the best performer in the EU and the second uses as benchmark the maximum observed within the country. To conduct our analysis, we use data from Eurostat, covering the period 2000 to 2021 and a three-stage estimation for systems of simultaneous equations. Preliminary results show that on average, between 2000 and 2021, the economic gap between EU regions have decreased but regional disparities within the EU countries have increased, whereas the innovation divide reports an average opposite trend. Less developed regions are the ones with the highest economic and innovation gap. More innovative regions report lower values of both type of gaps (between EU regions and within countries). Reduction in the economic gap is positively associated with higher value of R&D expenditure per capita in the previous year.