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Within the article, new observations on the gap between metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions are presented. The economic performance of a country mostly emanates from its metropolitan regions. As these regions profit from a highly dynamic routine, they are growing rapidly. From the outside, assumptions about the prosperity of a nation is often presumed to stay in steady proportion to the development of its economic lead. However, not only the gap between metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions is in no steady proportion, this difference also varies when observing capital city metropolitan regions and second-tier metropolitan regions, meaning metropolitan regions of a country other than the capital. The article concludes that differences between these categories are slightly shrinking, but the gaps are still enormous. Nevertheless, the dynamics of these gaps are largely overseen and the assumption that non-metropolitan regions of a country are developing in a fixed relation to metropolitan regions needs a closer investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of the current political developments in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, such as Ukraine, Poland, and Romania, the question arises as to the role played by economic transformation and the resulting innovation linkages in these countries over the last 20 years. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of economic and institutional dimensions on the development of CEE countries, explicitly distinguishing between European Union (EU) members and non‐members, and thus reflecting the differences in institutions and path dependency. Furthermore, the paper contrasts the performance of CEE countries with that of Western European countries. To achieve these objectives, the impact of factors such as innovation, institutions, and political practices on the economic development of 37 European countries from 2000 until 2020 is followed using fixed effects regression and Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The results of the analysis show the importance of institutional factors such as low levels of corruption, political freedoms, and intellectual property. The effect of institutional variables was particularly pronounced in the case of non‐EU countries, which indicates the particular importance of the development of stable institutions for achieving higher levels of economic development for this category of countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]