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While the literature is rich in anecdotal cases of firms going through nearshoring strategies, understood as the relocation of production inputs in a geographically closer area, a study on the macroeconomic effects of nearshoring at regional level, in terms of both growth and regional inequalities, is still missing. Instead, understanding the potential regional variations in the outcomes of nearshoring practices is crucial for policymakers and stakeholders aiming to strike a balance between the imperative of strategic autonomy and the need to address existing regional disparities. The paper picks up such a challenge and, once nearshoring has been defined at the macroeconomic level as a process according to which the EU relative to extra‐EU inputs ratio increases, compared with a reference period in the past, it analyses regional inequality effects of such a phenomenon in Europe. The results show that nearshoring turns out to be notably diverse and contingent upon the efficiency gains the target regions offer. In some cases, it produces potential adverse consequences, going against the already complex process of decreasing regional disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past decade, world economic development was coupled with disruptive challenges. Among them, digitalisation and new forms of globalisation represent a potential threat for economic growth opportunities and for the future of labour markets. Digital transition calls for the assessment of the impact of robotisation and digitalisation on skill composition, employment levels, productivity and growth dynamics. In turn, the largest wave of globalisation after that taking place before the First World War caused, first, the emergence of global value chains and, more recently, their disintegration with partial mechanisms of reshoring, with consequences for growth and employment opportunities. All these challenges call for comprehensive approaches to their modelling. This paper presents the main advances introduced in the fifth generation of the MAcroeconomic, Sectoral, Social, Territorial (MASST5) model, which carved a relevant niche in the empirical literature on macro-econometric regional growth, and has now been strengthened to model future digitalisation transitions, as well as the national and regional breakdown of the way global value chains will reorganise. A longer time series, especially in the regional submodel, also allows one to take the major changes taking place in Europe following the 2007–08 financial crisis, and the 2020 COVID-induced contraction into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the large evidence of the recent globalization phenomenon at national level, very little is known about the involvement of regional economies in Global Value Chains (GVCs). Instead, the regional dimension of GVCs is of primary importance since regions require an absolute advantage to be part of an international production chain. It can in fact be easily the case that within the same country both the participation and the gains from GVCs strongly differ among regions. In going to the territorial roots of GVCs, the paper aims to conceptualize a taxonomy of different modes in which regions can be involved in GVCs, based on different intensity of participation and rewarding conditions. Based on regional trade in value added matrices, the taxonomy is applied to the manufacturing sector at NUTS2 regions in Europe, combining two indicators of regional participation and 'terms of trade' imposed in the chain. Although national patterns are visible, and a clear divide between Eastern and Western Europe emerges, the modes of involvement are highly diversified within countries. Moreover, through a multinomial logit model, the local characteristics associated with the different roles that regions can have within GVCs are looked for. Their identification has far-reaching normative consequences that intervene in the capacity of regions to gain from participation in GVCs, and to mitigate the interregional income distribution effects that this involvement may cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]