AI and Regional Growth

The seminar would look at how artificial intelligence is shaping regional economic performance, distinguishing between two main channels: AI generation, understood as the creation of AI inventions, and AI adoption, meaning the deployment of AI technologies by firms and other economic actors. Using panel data for European regions over the period 2013–2023, Professor Rodriguez-Pose will compare the relationship between these two channels and GDP per capita growth. The main finding is a clear asymmetry. AI adoption, which is geographically more diffuse across European regions, is associated with significant gains in GDP per capita. AI generation, by contrast, is much more concentrated in a handful of metropolitan regions and shows a weaker, largely insignificant relationship with local economic outcomes. The results also suggest that AI adoption strengthens the returns to regional investments in R&D and higher education. About the speaker Andrés Rodríguez-Pose is the Princesa de Asturias Chair and Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he directs the Cañada Blanch Centre. From 2022 to 2024, he chaired the European Union’s High-level Group on the Future of Cohesion Policy, helping shape the post-2027 direction of the world’s largest development policy, with a €392 billion budget. Professor Rodríguez-Pose’s research focuses on regional growth and inequality, innovation, trade, decentralisation, institutions, migration, and development and industrial policy. His work has had major academic and policy impact. From an academic perspective, he is one of the world’s most influential scholars in economic geography and in regional and urban development. In the 2025 Stanford/Elsevier ranking of the top 2% most-cited scientists globally —covering nearly 200,000 researchers across all disciplines— he ranked among the top 700 researchers worldwide. He has been recognised as the most-cited scholar globally in urban and regional planning in four of the past five years. In terms of policy, he regularly advises numerous international organisations, including the European Commission, World Bank, OECD, UN agencies, and major development banks. He holds numerous honours in the field of economic development, including the 2025 Sir Peter Hall Award for Lifetime Contribution, the 2018 ERSA Prize in Regional Science, as well as honorary doctorates by the universities of Utrecht (The Netherlands) and Jönköping (Sweden).