Economic performance of small city-regions in the post-communist context: evidence from Czechia

We examine whether current economic performance of the Czech small city-regions is fuelled rather by industrial specialization or diversification when additionally accounting for urbanization economies, spatial interactions between regions, and industrial legacy from the communist era. Regression models showed that both industrial specialization and legacy of past industrialization significantly associate with higher current economic performance. At the same time, we have shown that while urbanization economies arising from the urban scale matter, the effects of the position in the settlement hierarchy on economic performance are stronger than population size per se.