Higher education and firms: on the interaction between research and regional policies

In the European Union, a series of competencies are shared between a central agency called the European Commission, and the governments of the Member States. This paper focuses on two of those policies: research and regional development. Here, we model and discuss how the level of commitment of a central authority toward poor regions affects the design of the best decision-making process. We explore cases of full centralization and full decentralization, and situations where the two levels of government are allowed to take decisions, either simultaneously or sequentially. In the latter case, we make a distinction between a situation where the central agency decides first as in most federations, and one in which it decides second, then being an agent of national governments. This setting is especially relevant for the European Union. We show, in particular, that when the degree of commitment of the center is high, assignment of redistributive competencies to both levels of power is a proxy for centralization. Additionally, the poorer region may find its best interest in an institutional design where the regions decide first.