Creativity and regional innovation: Evidence from EU regions

We analyse the role of creative workers in the region as a source and foundational element of regional innovation in the European Union. We show the empirical relevance of this factor - which we label inspiration - within the structure of a recursive model of regional innovation for a set of 83 European regions. We show that, when differentiated from the presence of regional intelligence - as measured by the availability of human capital - and from technological infrastructure, inspiration, along with the degree of development of national and regional institutions, has the strongest direct and indirect effects on regional patenting activity. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.