Can Regional Integration Survive De‐Globalisation? An Empirical Investigation Focusing on Productivity and Innovation

Against a general trend towards de‐globalisation, we investigate the influence of regional integration processes among countries—viewed as the consequence of political/institutional choices, which are typically omitted from empirical analysis—on labour productivity and innovation. We find that regionalisation adds substantively to explaining the relationship between productivity and well‐known determinants especially through investments in infrastructure, supporting the hypothesis that regional integration, as a separate choice from globalisation, is still a valuable pathway to promote economic growth and development.