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Smart Specialisation Strategies and Regional Convergence: Spanish Extremadura after a Period of Divergence

Paulo Miguel Madeira, Mário Vale and Julián Mora-Aliseda
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Paulo Miguel Madeira: Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, 1600-189 Lisboa, Portugal
Mário Vale: Centro de Estudos Geográficos e Laboratório Associado TERRA, Instituto de Geografia e Ordenamento do Território, Universidade de Lisboa, 1600-276 Lisboa, Portugal
Julián Mora-Aliseda: Departamento de Arte y Ciencias del Territorio, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Extremadura, 10003 Cáceres, Spain

Economies, 2021, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: Smart specialization strategies are a new EU approach to cohesion policy, meant to deliver growth and development at EU national and regional level. Bearing in mind its focus on place-based development strategies, this paper intends to shed some light on its appropriateness to tackle uneven development and regional growth divergence. The paper showcases Spanish Extremadura growth trajectory. Extremadura is a poor region in the European context that between 2008 and 2014 diverged from the EU average, despite being eligible for EU funding as a convergence region by cohesion policy. In the 2014–2020 programming period, there was a positive dynamic at the beginning, but from 2017 onwards convergence stopped, which indicates that thematic and regional programmes have not delivered results or have not compensated for higher growth level of other Spanish regions. Moreover, research and innovation strategies for smart specialization (RIS3) seem to have limited impacts on place-based economic transformation in less developed regions. From this example, the suitability of the smart specialisation strategy as the core of cohesion policy in the programming period is discussed. It concludes that this strategy is interesting for intermediate development regions with some industrial base but does not seem appropriate as a convergence driver for poorer regions.

Keywords: regional development; EU cohesion policy; convergence objective regions; RIS3; 2008 crisis; Extremadura; Spain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E F I J O Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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