Productivity disparities in the European regions tend to persist. In order to understand the
underlying sources of this phenomenon we assess the importance of science and regional
innovation modes on firms’ productivity growth on a sample of 150,712 firms across 161 NUTSII
European regions, over the period 2012-2017. We find that science is a major source of firms’
productivity growth, and it has been particularly important to firms located in Southern Europe
and, to less extent, in Eastern EU regions, indicating that a science-push convergence process
is at work in the EU peripheral regions. Our findings also show that the fast-growing
productivity firms are those who benefit more from external knowledge and innovation. Growth
by imitation seems to be a viable strategy restricted to the slow-growing productivity firms.
These results help to conciliate contentious evidence regarding firms’ benefits from spillovers,
namely from scientific knowledge.
