EMPIRICS OF THE METROPOLITAN PRODUCTIVITY PATTERNS IN EUROPE

This paper focuses on the main European metropolitan areas and builds empirics on their evolution over the process of economic integration these last twenty years. These metropolitan areas are acknowledged to be the main engines of economic development in Europe, and to concentrate larger and larger shares of population, activities, R&D resources. Different theoretical frameworks have grounded these cumulative dynamics. Recently, regional and development policies have also based their action on these areas, through the concept of polycentricity for instance. The paper rests thus on a database of the forty main European cities over the period 1975-2000, disaggregated in twenty sectors of activity. First of all, the paper analyses the processes of convergence in terms of productivity or sectoral similarities at work between the different metropolitan areas as well as the evolution of their specialization in terms of value added or employment. An analytical framework is outlined thereafter, based on the rates of growth of productivity and employment, which allows us to define a dynamic view of this convergence process, and to map the dynamic comparative advantages of sectors in our metropolitan areas. In addition to the in-depth analysis of the cities, the results of these different steps show that the metropolitan areas are the main vectors of the process of European integration; a standard model of the metropolitan area seems to emerge as a result of this process.