The book aims to present "traditional features" of regional science (as geographical concepts and institutions), as well as relatively new topics such as innovation and agglomeration economies. In particular it demonstrates that, contrary to what has been argued by recent economics literature, both geography and institutions (or culture) are relevant for local development. In fact, these phenomena, along with the movement of goods and workers, are among the main reasons for persisting development differentials. These intriguing relationships are at the heart of the analysis presented in this book and form the conceptual basis for a promising institutional approach to economic geography.

The evaluation of public policies is of paramount importance for modern policy making, especially in a period of severe budget constraints. The literature has proposed several methods to deal with the issue of causality and counterfactual evaluation in a variety of contexts, with an increasing attention to the local dimension. The book aims to present the state-of-the-art of evaluation techniques with a special focus on the consideration of geographical and spatial effects into existing methodologies (such as propensity score matching, regression discontinuity, difference-in-difference). Furthermore, the volume highlights how strict the identification conditions for models with spatial effects are and proposes instrumental variables as a technique able to circumvent the issue. Finally, some insights into the emerging literature on ex ante evaluation are offered with respect to EU Cohesion Policy.

The book aims to present "traditional features" of regional science (as geographical concepts and institutions), as well as relatively new topics such as innovation and agglomeration economies. In particular it demonstrates that, contrary to what has been argued by recent economics literature, both geography and institutions (or culture) are relevant for local development. In fact, these phenomena, along with the movement of goods and workers, are among the main reasons for persisting development differentials. These intriguing relationships are at the heart of the analysis presented in this book and form the conceptual basis for a promising institutional approach to economic geography.