In recent years, Regional Sciences have helped us to understand the great transformations that involve at least three decades the world economic system and their effects on land and society. They also formed an important framework of analysis for other disciplines such as economic development, the economics of innovation and the knowledge economy. This collective book, without having the ambition to propose solutions ready for use, is to help clarify methodological issues, provide ideas for application of an operational nature and reflect on a future policy for Mediterranean economic development. The contributions, apparently independent, not born in the context of a joint program, while inevitably return a fragmentary view of the matter, on the other provide a kit and multi-faceted methodology, making possible to compare different epistemologies and different ways of understanding the discipline. Addressing specific cases and spurring new methodological questions, the authors offer several different interpretations of concepts and methodologies and often overlap with other disciplines, not only economic. With the intent to emphasize the connection of the regional economy with other economic disciplines, the book is organized into three parts - Development, Innovation and Knowledge - following an evolutionary path, which from the development economics has come to the knowledge economy of our day.

One of the assumptions of the book is the interdisciplinary nature of the regional economy and its objectives paramount
practical, which are counterbalanced by a weak theoretical recognition. It could be argued, indeed, that the recognition of the regional economy is due more to the attention that a number of studies devoted to the spatial dimension of economic phenomena and the interaction between endogenous and exogenous components, and the development of a shared theory. Obvious goal of discipline is, in fact, to return in the economic centrality to people and places that are too often finished in second place before the impatience of explain the major contemporary economic theories. The book suggests to the reader, finally, a reflection on the meaning and objectives of economic decline and regional practices in different geographic contexts. We can totally clarify different perceptions of the regional economy only if we learn to understand and respect cultural and social differences that exist between regions, contiguous parts sometimes of the same country.