Universities matter to the development of their host regions. This insight is anything
but new, as countless studies demonstrate the positive impact of universities on their
regional environment. To some extent this is hardly surprising. For centuries governments
all over Europe, and also in other parts of the world, have funded existing
universities and initiated the establishment of new ones. This support was often
linked to useful university outputs. For instance, educating civil servants constituted
one of the earliest tasks of European universities, and 19th century technical universities
were primarily established to safeguard the supply of human capital for the
emerging science-based industries (Hüther and Krücken 2016).
Systematic empirical research into the effects of universities on their host regions
likewise has a long tradition. Initially, much of this research focused on how the expenditures
of universities, faculty, staff and students affect their host regions through
direct and indirect “demand-side” effects of consumption and investment. Time and
again, researchers estimated these effects to be substantial (cf. Drucker and Goldstein
2007, for a survey). It is similarly well-established that universities exert “supplyside”
effects through the production of graduates (Stephan 2012). More recently the

• Universities and sustainable regional development: introduction to the special issue