France 2030: understanding the territorial anchoring of future investment

Frontier Economics contributed, alongside Dr Eugénie Dugoua, Mensia Conseil and Vertone, to the evaluation of the territorial impacts of the France 2030 programme.

The mission aimed to analyse how the programme’s funding commitments are deployed across France, and what their distribution reveals about the scientific, productive and industrial capacities of different territories.

We focused on understanding the territorial anchoring of the programme through three main questions: which types of territories attract funding? What factors explain these differences? How do these dynamics vary according to the technology readiness level of the projects?

At Frontier Economics, we worked more specifically on two areas of the analysis: identifying the determinants of the departmental distribution of funding commitments, and analysing the spatial distribution of funding according to the technology readiness level of projects.

Identifying the territorial determinants of funding commitments

The first part of the analysis examined the determinants of the departmental distribution of France 2030 funding commitments. The econometric analysis tests the extent to which the differences observed across departments can be explained by their own characteristics.

The results show that this distribution is largely explained by the social and economic characteristics of territories. The factors associated with funding levels include, in particular, the density of the R&D and industrial base, human capital, population, the presence of research infrastructure, and certain geographic specificities.

These results provide a more precise understanding of the geography of France 2030 funding commitments. The concentration of funding reflects the ability of territories to mobilise skills, infrastructure and sectoral ecosystems capable of generating innovation, deployment or industrialisation projects. 

This figure illustrates the existence of a national spatial dynamic in the distribution of funding commitments. The Moran scatterplot compares the funding observed in a given department with the funding observed in neighbouring departments. It helps identify whether highly funded departments tend to be located close to other highly funded departments, or whether territorial patterns are more dispersed. The positive and statistically significant global Moran’s I highlights a moderate level of spatial autocorrelation.

Analysing the spatial distribution of funding according to technology readiness level

The second part of the analysis focused on the spatial distribution of funding according to the technology readiness level of projects. This approach distinguishes the specific geographies associated with different stages of the innovation chain, from fundamental research through to industrialisation.

We identify differentiated geographies across technology readiness levels. Fundamental research is more concentrated around major metropolitan areas and research ecosystems. Industrialisation is more strongly anchored in industrial territories. Intermediate phases, particularly experimental R&D and growth and deployment, show more diffuse patterns. 

This figure complements the national analysis by identifying local funding clusters according to technology readiness level. It shows that spatial concentrations vary from one phase to another. Fundamental research clusters differ from industrialisation clusters, confirming that the territorial capacities mobilised vary depending on whether projects relate to knowledge production, experimentation, deployment or scaling up to industrial production.

The analysis also highlights a spatial spillover effect between neighbouring territories. Funding in the growth and deployment phase in one department is associated with a higher probability of funding in the industrialisation phase in nearby departments. This result suggests the existence of complementary territorial dynamics in the downstream stages of the innovation chain, where deployment capacities and industrial capacities can reinforce each other at the scale of regional or interregional areas.

The full evaluation is available here: Evaluation des impacts territoriaux du programme France 2030