The research project aims to investigate the extent to which the green and the digital transitions can be combined to make local economies evolve along smart, sustainable and inclusive patterns of growth. While not new, the debate about the so-called “twin transition” has been revived by the Covid19 crisis, with recovery plans making it an absolute priority, especially in Europe. However, this is occurring with scarce research on the enabling conditions of the twinning at stake and with little attention to its distribution across regions marked by heterogeneous levels of socio-economic development. In the absence of in-depth regional research on the topic, policy agendas might end up following dangerous “one-fits-all” recommendations, obtaining even perverse effects. More dedicated research appears therefore necessary.Greenhouse gas emissions and the entailed raise of global temperatures are making the access to food and water uncertain, weather extremes and natural disasters more frequent, and the threats to international peace and safety more insistent. A green transition is necessary to “act forward”. At the same time, the digital transition towards more powerful and empowering digital technologies needs to be intertwined with the green one. On the one hand, digital technologies pose serious environmental threats, which span from the depletion of rare materials in their production to the high energy consumption in their use. On the other hand, digital technologies offer important environmental opportunities, both in improving green efficiency and footprint of current production and consumption modes and in facilitating the development of new green technologies for that to happen.The research project at stake addresses the extent to, and the conditions on which these digital-green threats and opportunities are neutralize and exploited, respectively, across local areas that differentiate into core and peripheral, urban and rural, industrial and agricultural, to mention a few elements of socio-economic heterogeneity.The research project builds on and extends recent research in the geography of eco-innovation field, in transition ecological studies, and in the literature about new green industrial path development. On this basis, it will address a series of more specific research topics, among which:- Regional patterns of “green digital” and “digital for green” production and consumption.- Regional knowledge recombination at the core of new green & digital technologies.- Regional items and bundles of green and digital activities.- The twin transition relation with regional cohesion and growth.- The twin transition in-between societal challenges and policy making.The research will be realized by assembling a new bunch of datasets that, mainly but not exclusively with respect to European regions, will collect and harmonize primary and secondary data, both micro geo-referenced and meso-ones, functional to the construction and econometric analysis of key variables and relationships in the relevant domains of the research, among which: local introduction and adoption of green and digital technologies, and of green and digital patterns of production and consumption; environmental impact of the local production and use of digital technologies; local policy initiatives across the digital and green domain and their detectable outcomes.

The successful candidate is expected to have a good background of applied economic studies and at least an introductory level of knowledge of the main issues and concepts in regional and (eco-)innovation economics. Moreover, the candidate should have basic econometric and statistical skills and competencies in handling large databases, in particular about innovation proxies like R&D and patent data.

The research will be carried out within the Social Sciences Area (SSA) of the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI), located in L’Aquila.The SSA team is made up of about 20 researchers actively involved in the GSSI mission of carrying out frontier research and high-level doctoral education in Regional Science and Economic Geography. In this field, the area offers its 4-year International PhD Program, whose faculty includes outstanding international scholars and whose program comprehends courses of relevance for the research project at stake and for the National PhD Program in Sustainable Development and Climate Change (https://www.Gssi.It/education/regional-science-economic-geography).The SSA research team is engaged with five research tracks: i) Inner Areas and Peripheral Development; ii) Disasters and Regional Resilience; iii) Human Capital, Migration and Local Labour Markets; iii) Culture, Tourism and Regional Urban Development; iv) Regional Policy Evaluation and Local Urban Governance; v) Business, Innovation and Environmental Sustainability Within and Across Regions. The research project at stake will mainly refer to research track v), but it will also intersect with the other four (i) and ii) in particular).The candidate will have the opportunity to interact with the students of the PhD program of the house, and to get advised by top-scholars in regional and innovation studies in a truly interdisciplinary environment: both within the SSA, comprehending applied economists and economic geographers using heterogeneous approaches (https://www.Gssi.It/people/professors/lectures-social-science-gssi-cities), and with the other GSSI areas with which it regularly interacts, that is, Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science.