Evaluating Regional Competitiveness Policies: Insights from the New Economic Geography

Potter J. Evaluating regional competitiveness policies: insights from the New Economic Geography, Regional Studies. This paper examines the relevance of theoretical insights emerging from the New Economic Geography (NEG) for the evaluation of regional competitiveness policies. The major value of the NEG for evaluation is that it offers a clear theory of change on how policy can be expected to impact on regional competitiveness and a theoretical framework for considering potential impacts on national growth as well as spatial equity. Its insights can inform the questions that evaluators pose and the processes they seek to measure. NEG ideas on the influences on competitiveness and their outcomes suggest several new evaluation challenges, including extending the scope of the activities evaluated, assessing interrelationships among regions, assessing impacts on net agglomeration economies, evaluating the trade-off between growth and equity, and understanding threshold effects.