Productivity and left-behindness of EU metropolitan regions: Trends, spatial analysis and convergence

Metropolitan regions are considered as major drivers of economic growth due to the significant productivity gains resulting from their agglomeration economies. This article examines the level, growth, convergence and clustering of productivity in metropolitan EU regions, as defined by Functional Urban Areas (FUAs), to obtain insights into their performance inequalities and determine left-behind urban regions during the decade 2010–2019. The findings show that the frontier metropolitan regions are largely located in the central and western Europe, while the laggard ones are found in the southern and eastern Europe. The mega (or very large) metropolitan regions are found to be more productive than the smaller ones. However, smaller metropolitan regions, especially those having less than one million inhabitants, present higher productivity growth than the larger ones. The existence of slow productivity convergence among the EU metropolitan regions is identified, which is still significant and even slower when considering spatial spillovers. The convergence becomes non-significant when excluding the eastern EU metropolitan regions, as the latter ones have the greatest dynamism. The results underline the left-behindness of southern European metropolitan regions, which can be attributed to the effect of the past economic crisis, the lack of dynamism, and the limited spatial productivity spillovers. They also suggest the importance of designing place-based development policies to enhance productivity and diminish inequalities of the frontier and dynamic EU regions with those left behind.