In recent years there is a growing interest in determining the impact of inequality on economic growth. Theoretical papers as well as empirical applications have, however, produced controversial results. Although there is a considerable part of the literature that considers inequality detrimental to growth, more recent studies have challenged this result and found a positive effect of inequality on growth. In this paper, we provide a contribution to the empirical puzzle by using meta‐analysis to systematically describe, identify and analyse the variation in outcomes of empirical studies. We find that estimation methods, data quality and sample coverage systematically affect the results. The results point out that it will be particularly useful to increasingly focus research on determining the impact of income inequality on economic growth using single‐country data at the regional level, or a relatively homogeneous set of countries with adequate controls for country‐wide differences in economic, social and institutional characteristics.

This article adds to the empirical evidence on the impact of agglomeration externalities on regional growth along three main dimensions. On the basis of data on 259 Europe NUTS2 (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) regions and 15 NACE (Nomenclature statistique des Activités économiques dans la Communauté Européenne) 1.1 2-digit industries for the period 1990–2007, we show that agglomeration externalities are stronger in technology-intensive industries, also after controlling for sorting; that specialization externalities are stronger for low density regions, while diversity matters more for denser urban areas; and, finally, that Jacobs externalities comprise a pure diversification effect (related variety) and a portfolio effect (unrelated variety), although evidence of positive effects on regional growth is only found for the latter. An additional contribution of this article is to extend the analysis on the basis of a full geographical coverage of European NUTS2 regions, with the aim to generalize the empirical identification of the impacts of specialization and diversification externalities with respect to the existing literature. Our results are robust to a rich set of consistency checks, including the use of spatial autoregressive models with autoregressive disturbances, used to assess to what extent the effects of agglomeration externalities are localized

The aim of this study is to empirically examine regional resilience by assessing economic growth patterns in two distinct groups of regions across the European Union in the aftermath of the 2008 economic and financial crisis. In an effort to consider the regions as interconnected economic areas and account for spillover effects, the model incorporates complex spatial effects that consider both spatial heterogeneity and spatial dependence. The analysis follows a step‐wise approach. First, spatial heterogeneity is assessed by employing Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis, which identifies two distinct spatial regimes, a core and a periphery, based on their initial level of economic development. A Spatial Durbin Model is then employed to estimate the determinants of regional resilience and growth in both regimes, including potential spillover effects. Results indicate that while both spatial regimes experience processes of economic convergence, recent determinants of growth, as well as spillover dynamics, differ across the two. In the core regime, better institutions, higher shares of investment, and an economy specialized in higher value‐added sectors significantly spur domestic growth, with investment also inducing positive spillover effects to neighbouring regions. In the peripheral regime, low shares of lower‐secondary educational attainment and high shares of tertiary educational attainment have a significant positive effect on domestic growth, with higher shares of tertiary educational attainment also inducing positive spillover effects. Moreover, technological readiness is also identified as an important factor in the peripheral regime with positive spillover effects. Upon the bedrock of these findings, initial policy proposals are offered.