Do smart city policies work?

Abstract

Smart City policies have attracted significant funding over the last few years. However, only less evidence is available of their impact on urban economic performance. In this paper, we look at the urban growth and innovation impact of Smart City policies, exploiting a dataset collected for these analyses comprising data on Smart City characteristics of 309 European metro areas, Smart City policy intensity, along with the urban growth and innovation outputs. Economic growth is measured as real GDP increases, while innovation is captured by patent applications to the European Patent Office, both measures being calculated between 2008 and 2013. Patent counts include technologically narrower classes, namely high-tech, ICT and specific Smart City technology patent applications. Instrumental variables and propensity score matching estimates suggest that cities engaging in Smart City policies more than the EU average tend to grow faster and patent more intensively.