R&D collaborations and the role of proximity. Regional Studies. This paper explores the impact of proximity measures on knowledge exchange measured by granted research and development (R&D) collaboration projects in German NUTS-3 regions. The results are obtained from a spatial interaction model including eigenvector spatial filters. Not only geographical but also other forms of proximity (technological, organizational and institutional) have a significant influence on the emergence of collaborations. Furthermore, the results suggest interdependences between proximity measures. Nevertheless, the analysis does not show that other forms of proximity may compensate for missing geographical proximity. The results indicate that (subsidized) collaborative innovation activities tend to cluster.

In 2017 the world economy is in an upswing, but consumer price inflation is still surprisingly low in advanced economies, and central banks will therefore keep key interest rates very low and financial conditions favorable for the rest of the year and, probably, for 2018. Global growth, though, will moderate a bit, since expansive policy measures in China have been reduced. As an early consequence, imports of emerging Asia were no more than stagnant during summer. The upswing in the euro area is broad based, both regionally and with respect to the different components of aggregate demand, as investment has recently picked up markedly, partly due to construction of dwellings. From the production side, the level of capacity utilization in the manufacturing sector is clearly above its long-term average and rising further. Inflation will not have reached the ECB’s target rate of below but close to 2% at the end of 2018. The trend of a growing participation rate in labour markets and the amount of part-time and low quality jobs are some reasons why overall wage and price dynamics are still very moderate; the appreciation of the euro, the incorporation of technical innovations and a possible change in the consumer preferences for low-cost products could be other reasons. We forecast a GDP growth rate of 2.3% for 2017 and 1.9% for 2018. This year’s strong pickup of world trade means that net exports will, in spite of rather strong domestic demand, contribute positively to GDP growth in 2017, while the opposite holds for 2018, due to the significant appreciation of the Euro.

Policies that foster the expansion of regional banking services can be an effective tool to enhance financial inclusion by facilitating the access to deposit services. Financial inclusion, in turn, can expand banks’ deposit base with positive spillovers for financial stability, both at the bank and country levels. Governments’ support to unconventional branching via correspondent banking, to the proportionality of regulation, and to the harmonization of banking services can provide the conditions to stimulate banks to reach customers that remain outside the financial system, especially in emerging countries. By encouraging these conditions within its Financial Inclusion Action Plan, the G20 could effectively link its financial inclusion and financial stability objectives within a consistent policy framework.

Subsidies for research and development (R&D) are an important tool of public R&D policy, which motivates extensive scientific analyses and evaluations. This article adds to this literature by arguing that the effects of R&D subsidies go beyond the extension of organizations’ monetary resources invested into R&D. It is argued that collaboration induced by subsidized joint R&D projects yield significant effects that are missed in traditional analyses. An empirical study on the level of German labor market regions substantiates this claim, showing that collaborative R&D subsidies impact regions’ innovation growth when providing access to related variety and embedding regions into central positions in cross-regional knowledge networks.

The contribution of this thesis is to widen the focus of the literature on related variety. So far, this line of research has a strong focus on technological relatedness and cognitive proximity (Boschma et al. 2015). This thesis puts emphasis on three dimensions of relatedness that not yet been at the heart of research: input-output linkages and vertically related variety, the occupational dimensions of relatedness as well as insights from a project level R&D efforts and their relevance for the analysis of technological relatedness. We contribute to the understanding of how the specific composition and the degree of relatedness of economic agents in space shape their ability to generate variety in terms of entry of new occupational specialisations in regions. We enhance the understanding of how related variety affects different regional outcomes such employment growth and innovation and offer insights into the structure of inter-industry relations from a technological perspective and explains how the rise of certain technologies shapes inter-industry relatedness patterns.