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This paper studies regional productive performance differentials among 243 NUTS-2 European regions for the period 2003–11. Within the last two decades the technology gap between European regions has increased considerably. Building on previous studies that have used data envelopment analysis (DEA) and which have neglected national production structures and pre-existing technological heterogeneity, we examine differences in regional productive performance by using a meta-frontier framework. Our findings confirm significant differences in productive performance across European regions and a large North–South technology gap. A panel vector autoregression (PVAR) shows that this regional technology gap can be attributed to differences in human capital and innovation activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between regions' spatial organization and subjective well-being in North-West Europe. Combining data on life satisfaction with data on the spatial structure of regions, we find that the degree of polycentricism is positively associated and dispersion is negatively associated with life satisfaction. At the same time, the results indicate that in more dispersed regions, people experience more positive effects of polycentric structures than in more centralized regions, while residents of more urbanized polycentric regions report lower levels of life satisfaction compared with residents of less urbanized polycentric regions. Likewise, the findings suggest that urban residents living in polycentric regions are less satisfied compared with their rural counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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