The UK has a profound problem of regional disparities in productivity performance, with second tier cities that underperform compared to expectations based on their size, and deindustrialised towns and urban areas that have failed to find productive new economic roles. The distribution of research and development investment in the UK – especially in the public sector – is also highly skewed to the prosperous Greater South East.
richard jones
At this Vital Topics event, Richard A.L. Jones, Professor of Materials Physics and Innovation Policy, University of Manchester, and a Co Investigator in our Knowledge Capital theme – will discuss the evidence – and the uncertainties – relating to the link between R&D and productivity at a subnational level, and outline the institutional landscape that has led to the UK’s current, highly unbalanced, regional distribution of R&D. He will consider some of the uses and pitfalls of using innovation policy as an instrument of regional economic development.
