Innovation and production network policies for sustained regional economic growth.

The objective of the subcall EURO-2-2014, entitled "The European growth agenda", is to overcome the financial and economic crisis and stabilize the European Union on a sustainable, resilient and inclusive growth path. Growth is to be realized by investing in research and development to create future opportunities, to create jobs and to increase the competitiveness of regions, individual member states and the EU as a whole. The research should provide tools for assessment of the socio-economic evolution o f economic systems and means to analyze policy options and decision making mechanisms. The subcall focuses in particular on coping with and benefiting from globalization of industry, services and R&D, and particularly the dynamics in the spatial location and rise of new economic actors outside the EU. The consortium?s proposal focuses on dimension 3 of the subcall, the cost and benefits of global innovation and production networks, and integrates elements of dimension 4, the costs and benefits of migratio n, in which we take migration as an alternative to relocating production and innovation activities to employ people otherwise invited to migrate. the consortium addresses the following research question: Given the spatial dynamics in innovation and produc tion networks and the effects on regions within and outside the EU involved, how can policies assist particular regions and the EU at large in stimulating innovativeness of firms in particular regions, (high quality and inclusive) employment and (environm entally) sustainable economic growth? In contrast to the common research approach of case studies and theoretical inference, the consortium proposes to use empirically calibrated agent-based computer simulation models (ABMs).