Abstract:

Regions need to promote their own growth by mobilizing local assets and resources to capitalize on their specific competitive advantages, rather than depending on national transfers and subsidies to help them grow. Traditional policies are not sufficient and a more comprehensive policy is called for, one that integrated infrastructure and education in a coordinated agenda across levels of government and fostered business development and innovation. This paper aims to look into the role of innovation at regional level for potentially explaining the variations in growth among regions in Europe. To undertake the research, data available from Enterprise Survey was used to run regressions and test models to identify the role of innovation on regional economic growth. The results showed that innovation positively affects growth as endogenous growth theory suggests in Romania. This study can constitute the basis for understanding the concept of innovation in relation to regional economic growth and further research.