The main aim of this paper is to investigate if and to what extent entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) have an impact on economic resilience at local level. The paper is based on a quantitative analysis for the Italian provinces (NUT-3 level) and presents two novelties: first, it provides a composite index of EE at local level by capturing the different aspects encompassing political, social, cultural and economic dimensions of an EE; second, it analyzes the role of EE in terms of resistance to and recovery from external shocks. The empirical results show that EE has a relevant role in explaining the resilience of local systems to economic shocks. The positive effect also remains when controlling for the direct impact of new firm formation, thus highlighting that the EE concept has a greater significance for characterizing resilience and entrepreneurial activity at local level than entrepreneurial rates.

European guidelines for the smart specialization strategy (S3) required regions to identify synergies between technological domains within the same region (relatedness) and potential links of the chosen domains with other European regions (connectivity). The aim of this paper is to analyse if and to what extent regions have been able to implement such indications and the methodology adopted. The paper is based on a content analysis of the S3 documents approved by Italian regions. The empirical analysis reveals that only in a few cases regions considered relatedness and connectivity of technological domains. Moreover, the methods adopted by regions to detect potential links between the specialization domains is based more on anecdotal evidence than on the application of theoretically grounded methodologies. The paper suggests that the explanation for this omission is the absence of a consolidated methodology to deal with these issues and proposes some preliminary guidelines to overcome the problem.