Is bigger better? Economic performances of European cities, 1960–2009

•The biggest metropolitan areas had unequal performances in space and time in Europe.•The biggest metropolitan areas improve their economic performances from the 90s onwards.•No unambiguous relationship can be found between city size and economic performances in the years 2000.•In the last two decades, the re-concentration of activity in large cities is specific to certain regions of Europe (Northern and Eastern Europe).

During the two last decades, many theories have insisted on the competitive advantage of (big) cities. Beyond well known agglomeration effects, new theories have focused on the importance of connectivity and location of commanding and innovative functions in the context of globalization. According to these theories, the bigger and the most connected a city is, the most competitive. However, in the European context at least, such a hypothesis has never been tested in a systematic and proper way. Using a unique database with homogeneous definitions of European cities of more than 200,000 inhabitants, we propose in this paper to assess the link between size, economic structures, and the intensity of international functions and economic performances. Results show that, at least during the years 2000, we found no unambiguous relationship between size, level of internationalisation and economic growth of cities, except in Central and Eastern Europe.