Empirical assessment of the smart specialization concept on firm performance in european urban and rural regions

Abstract

This paper studies the role played by factors that are considered central to the concept of smart specialization on firm performance in a European context. The focus is on the type of spatial spillovers that occur at the firm level, which are connected to technological relatedness and knowledge externalities. The influence of such externalities is studied using firm-level data on firms located across Europe and unobserved heterogeneity and spatial dependencies are modelled by employing a multilevel model. Diverging patterns across the urbanrural range are studied by applying a regional typology. Findings indicate that measures thought to reflect smart specialization are positively associated with firm performance. It is also found that indicators of smart specialization do not affect firm performance homogenously across the studied regions.