Policy options for lagging regions—effects, new approaches and emerging challenges: introduction to the special issue

This introduction sets the scene for a special issue dedicated to exploring policy options for structurally weak or lagging regions and addresses the twin challenges of persistent regional disparities and evolving economic-societal contexts. The authors note the resurgence of interest in place-based regional policy, especially as rising populism, demographic change, and structural economic transformations underscore the importance of spatial inequalities. The article reviews the current state of evidence on regional policy effectiveness, highlighting ambiguous findings, heterogeneous regional responses to instruments such as innovation subsidies or smart-specialisation strategies, and the increasingly recognised role of regional industrial structure and absorptive capacity in mediating policy impacts. The editors summarise the contributions of the special issue: (1) case-oriented investigations of old industrial or rural lagging regions where smart specialisation may struggle; (2) spatial econometric analyses showing heterogeneous innovation effects of R&D inputs across regions; (3) novel policy interventions targeting small and medium enterprises and bridging the “valley of death” of commercialization in weak regions; and (4) studies on human-capital, recruitment and labour‐market constraints in peripheral areas and the potential for returning migration or niche specialisation. The concluding section emphasises the need for new empirical evidence, more fine-grained regional typologies, and enhanced data infrastructure to evaluate policy measures. Given the emerging challenges (such as demographic shortage, digital and green transitions) and the diversity of regional contexts, the authors argue for adaptive, context-sensitive regional policy design rather than one-size-fits-all solutions.