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The territorial capital of regions is an important determinant of growth, but also of the impact of EU Cohesion Policy. First, because it can act as a filter, enhancing the impact of regional policies. Second, the latter can help building territorial capital which, in turn, will foster regional development. This work analyses the medium and long‐run relationship between the territorial capital of EU NUTS 3 regions and Cohesion Policy using data from the programming period 2000–2006. Results point out complementarities between different territorial assets of regions and the impact of EU regional policy: Cohesion Policy effectiveness is higher when investments are focused on the assets complementary to those already abundant in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a panel of 265 regions from 24 OECD countries from 1997 to 2007, we explore the impact of nation‐wide macroeconomic and structural policies on the productivity growth of subnational regions. We find that average relationships between nation‐wide policies and regional productivity growth can hide strong differentiated effects according to the distance to the frontier: relaxing employment protection legislation on temporary contracts, lowering barriers to trade and investment and increasing trade openness enhances productivity growth in lagging regions, whereas reducing barriers to entrepreneurship or higher levels of government debt has a positive effect on regions closer to the productivity frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]