Search

Recurrent economic and financial crises, globalization, digitalization, and climate change are posing major challenges for regional economies to constantly renew their industrial structures. Over the past few years much progress has been made in understanding how new path development unfolds in a regional context. Earlier contributions to the path development literature have acknowledged that multiple industrial paths developing within a region are interdependent and coevolving. However, most conceptualizations and empirical analyses to date have mainly been focused on one new path or path development activities in one nascent industry only. Potential relationships between emerging paths have received little attention, and, as a consequence, little is known about how new paths shape each other's evolution. This article draws on recent contributions that broaden conventional perspectives on regional structural change and develops a framework to analyze the dynamic interdependencies between multiple new regional growth paths. We explore the nature of interpath linkages and discuss the role of agency in creating or shaping the relationship between linked paths to be either supportive, competitive, or neutral toward each other. By means of illustrative empirical examples, we show that interpath relationships in a regional context are a significant phenomenon to be considered in regional structural change and conclude by discussing policy implications and identifying avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although economic geography has made considerable progress in explaining the emergence of new industrial development paths, a number of issues have yet to be sufficiently explored. The purpose of this article is to contribute to economic geography research on path creation by developing a conceptual framework that specifies key conditions and reinforcing mechanisms for path creation, on the one hand, and barriers to the materialization of such conditions and mechanisms, on the other hand. As such, the framework moves beyond firm-centric perspectives and argues that path creation needs to be understood as a collective endeavor incorporating both firm and nonfirm actors. By implication, this necessitates an understanding of the broader contexts that shape path creation processes, including how the dynamics of an emerging path are affected by the dynamics of established paths. The authors employ this framework to analyze Norway's offshore wind power (OWP) industry. Their analysis reveals that an initial enabling context for OWP path creation turned into more constrained conditions. Similar to findings from a number of other studies, they identify branching between related sectors as a primary path creation mechanism. However, they find that this mechanism is vulnerable to shifting contextual conditions, which for various reasons resulted in the studied emerging path losing resources and legitimacy, thus implying potential negative path interdependence. The authors also identify barriers to path creation in the institutional environment, particularly in terms of lack of policy coherence in support for key resource formation processes that are pivotal for path creation processes to generate sustained momentum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who introduces structural change in regional economies: Entrepreneurs or existing firms? And do local or nonlocal establishment founders create most novelty in a region? We develop a theoretical framework that focuses on the roles different agents play in regional transformation. We then apply this framework, using Swedish matched employer–employee data, to determine how novel the activities of new establishments are to a region. Incumbents mainly reinforce a region’s current specialization: incumbent’s growth, decline, and industry switching further align them with the rest of the local economy. The unrelated diversification required for structural change mostly originates via new establishments, especially via those with nonlocal roots. Interestingly, although entrepreneurs often introduce novel activities to a local economy, when they do so, their ventures have higher failure rates compared to new subsidiaries of existing firms. Consequently, new subsidiaries manage to create longer-lasting change in regions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Industrial clusters are widely understood as a worthwhile target of local economic development resources. Nevertheless, most of the work on cluster development has asserted benefits that accrue to a regional economy as a whole, with little or no focus on specific links between clusters and poverty alleviation. This article seeks to understand the degree to which economic clusters are associated with lower poverty rates. Specifically, using spatial regression analysis techniques, we examine patterns that link clusters to poverty rates while controlling for the presence of other factors that shape the distribution of poverty in the United States. When controlling for other economic and demographic factors in a multivariate framework, the presence of industrial clusters is associated with lower poverty rates. Moreover, regions with a higher share of employment in clusters, and with that employment dispersed across many industries within the same cluster, fare even better than those where employment is concentrated in a single industry. Furthermore, while there is evidence that particular clusters are associated with significantly altered poverty rates, not all of these associations are beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

abstract In a seminal article, Chinitz (1961) considered the effects of industry size, structure, and economic diversification on the performance of firms and regional economies. His inquiry suggested a related but conceptually distinct issue: how does the extent to which a regional industry or industrial sector is concentrated in a small number of firms affect the local performance of that industry? The question has not been addressed systematically in empirical research other than case studies, principally because accurately measuring regional concentration requires firm-level information. This exploratory study uses confidential plant-level data to gauge concentration in manufacturing industries at the regional scale across the continental United States, to explore changes over time in geographic patterns of concentration, and to investigate associations between regional industrial structure concentration and changes in employment. The implications for understanding the impacts of regional industrial structure on economic development processes are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How should we think of the role of regions in relation to the global economy? Theory has surprising gaps when it comes to building a unified vision of these two scales of development. Two contributions to such a vision are proposed in this article. First, the relationship between geographic concentration and the regional economic specialization it underpins and globalization should be theorized as a dynamic process. Standard location and trade theory is not adequate for this task; instead, the dynamic relationship can be captured through growth theory. But capturing this dynamic relationship requires correcting growth theory to separate its local and its global components, which are, respectively, Marshall- Arrow and Romer externalities. Second, the missing element in all theories of geographic concentration and locally specialized development is an element labeled "context" here. A theory of context, in turn, raises important new questions about the dynamic welfare and developmental effects of contemporary processes of fragmenting and relocating production at a global scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the growing importance of global, or external, search networks that firms and other actors rely on to locate collaborators who can solve part of a problem they face or require part of a solution they may be able provide. We focus on the creation in emerging economies of venture capital-an institution that is organized to search systematically for, and foster the development of, firms and industries that can, in turn, collaborate in codesign. The article examines the case of Taiwan, where first-generation immigrant professionals from U.S. technology industries have collaborated with their home-country counterparts to develop the context for entrepreneurial development. It refers to the members of these networks as the new Argonauts, an allusion to the ancient Greek Jason and the Argonauts, who searched for the Golden Fleece. We also argue that the most significant contributions of these skilled professionals to their home countries are not direct transfers of technology or knowledge, but participation in external search and domestic institutional reform. The new Argonauts are ideally positioned to search beyond prevailing routines to identify opportunities for complementary "peripheral" participation in the global economy and to work with public officials to adapt and redesign relevant institutions and firms in their native countries. They are, therefore, exemplary protagonists of "self-discovery"-the process by which an enterprise or entrepreneur determines which markets it can serve-and of a micro level institutional reform that can, diffusing and cascading, ultimately produce wider structural transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship is an important process in regional economic development. Especially the growth of new firms is of major significance to the commercialization of new ideas and employment growth. These growing new firms are transforming structurally like caterpillars turning into butterflies. However, like butterflies, they are at risk of leaving their region of origin for better places. This article analyzes how and why the spatial organization of firms develops subsequent to their start-up. A new conceptual framework and an empirical study of the life course of entrepreneurial firms are used to construct a theory on the firms' locational behavior that explains that behavior as the outcome of a process of initiatives by entrepreneurs, enabled and constrained by resources, capabilities, and relations with stakeholders within and outside the firms. The study shows that entrepreneurs decide whether to move their firms outside their region of origin for different reasons in distinct phases of the firms' life course. Being embedded in social networks, for example, is an important constraint on locational behavior during the early life course of a firm, but over time it becomes less important, and other mechanisms, such as sunk costs, increasingly determine a firm's locational behavior. The development of spatial organization is also of major importance: when a multilocational spatial organization has been realized, it is much easier to move the headquarters to another region. The spatial organization of entrepreneurial firms co-evolves with the accumulation of the firms' capabilities. A developmental approach that incorporates evolutionary mechanisms and recognizes human agency provides new insights into the age-old study of the location of firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reevaluates the regional embeddedness of multinational manufacturing branch plants in view of recent work on global production networks and extraregional links. It argues that the predominance of extraregional production linkages is not necessarily detrimental to regional economies and that such linkages can even compensate for weak territorial innovations systems in noncore regions. The arguments are supported by a case study of the South Tyrol region of Italy, using firm-level data from surveys and interviews, complemented by evidence on institutional conditions. The findings suggest that neither the branch plants nor the locally owned manufacturing firms are strongly embedded in the region in terms of material linkages and interorganizational relationships, indicating that the ownership status of firms is not a good predictor of embeddedness. Second, compared to local firms, branch plants are more innovative and hence contribute to a larger degree to regional upgrading processes. Third, South Tyrol's core institutional structures, such as those governing the labor force, play a decisive role in the competitiveness of branch plants and therefore create codependencies that bind these producers to the territory. The results suggest a more differentiated assessment of the role of branch plants within noncore regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the trajectories of economic development among European national and regional economies in the light of the pressure for greater integration and enlargement of the European Union. Demonstration of the variations in the speed and direction of change in per capita income; Interpretations of growth and spatial development.

Examines global regionalization tendencies, by tracing trade interactions between 1965 and 1990. Information on postwar international trade relations; Factors which shape the world economy; Growth of regionalism in Europe and the North American Free Trade Agreement; Main viewpoints on the desirability of trading regions and their formation.

Explains a multiregion dynamic model of profitability, capital investment and value that eschews the notions of equilibrium. Measure of value; Values that differ between regions; Capital, supply and demand; Interregional flows of capital; Appropriate definition of the rate of profit.

Examines the role of some forms of production organization in the process of regional economic transformation. Presence of geographical or regional element to the transformative forces; Economic performance of the Midwest; Explanations for the Midwest's industrial recovery; International trade performance; Institutional barriers to production organization.