OECD Regions at a Glance 2016
OECD Regions at a Glance shows how regions and cities contribute to national economic growth and well-being. This edition updates more than 40 region-by-region indicators to assess disparities within countries and their evolution over the past 15 years. The report covers all the OECD member countries and, where data are available, Brazil, People’s Republic of China, Colombia, India, Latvia, Lithuania, Peru, the Russian Federation and South Africa.
New to this edition:
- A comprehensive picture of well-being in the 391 OECD regions based on 11 aspects that shape people's lives: income, jobs, housing, education, health, environment, safety, civic engagement and governance, access to services, social connections, and life satisfaction.
- Recent trends in subnational government finances and indicators on how competencies are allocated and co-ordinated across levels of governments.
Regional concentration of innovation related resources
In a knowledge-based economy, many drivers of productivity are linked to innovation-related investments, such as skilled human capital or research and development (R&D). While it is expected that R&D investments or patenting activity concentrate in the most productive regions so as to maximize the return, such a concentration of innovation-related resources in just a few regions may limit the prospects for other regions to catch up if innovation does not travel across regions. Given this, a common goal for regional development policy is to reduce inter-regional disparities in these innovation factors by boosting performance in the lagging regions.