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This paper estimates the impact of the different proximity dimensions on the subsequent innovation performance of firms which received radical knowledge spillovers. The analysis for the case of biotechnology small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs) in Germany is based on a dataset covering the period from 1998 to 2017. Results indicate the positive impact of social and organizational proximity on the innovation performance of radical knowledge recipients. Geographical proximity has a negative impact, whereas for cognitive proximity a U-shaped relation is observed. The paper contributes to the innovation economics and economic geography literature by underlining the peculiarities of the effectiveness of radical knowledge spillovers. Additionally, the importance of policy support for SMEs across regions and technological fields is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New inter-national and transnational complexities of economic and political relationships destabilize extant categories and units of analysis for studying trajectories of social change and explaining commonalities and differences of complex inequalities across countries. New insights on gender regime change emerge by shifting from a singular to a multi-scalar analytical frame. The paper argues that complex inequalities cannot be understood by studying a bounded geographic unit of analysis. Toward this end, the paper compares Germany and Japan in a world regional perspective, applying Walby's gender regime theory. Case comparisons of Germany and Japan not only reveal historical pathways of national developments, but also can show the benefits of a multi-scalar analytic in differentiating varieties and futures of gender regimes. An examination of the care economy shows why a multi-scalar analytic is critical for tracking the economic geographies of reproductive/care labor (both paid and unpaid). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The geographic concentration of industries has attracted much attention in recent economic and geographic literature. One mechanism employed to explain the emergence and comparative advantage of industrial agglomerations is based on the relationship between industrial agglomeration and local knowledge production and diffusion, and the resulting innovation activities. This paper analyses this relationship by identifying geographic concentrations of innovation activities and examining different causes for the emergence of these concentrations. The paper applies different concentration measures to patent data for German regions. We analyse 43 technological fields separately to identify which of these technologies tend to cluster in geographic space. The results are discussed in light of theoretical predictions of why specific technological fields concentrate while others do not. These explanations include the concentration of industrial activities, the role of dominant firms, dependence on scientific knowledge, and local interactions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

large part of the work in economic geography and other social sciences has focused on new growth prospects due to the establishment of global production chains and the rise of new clusters of industrial activity. Much less attention has been paid to former growth industries and regions that have recently experienced shrinking processes due to internationalization. This paper will explore the cases of two chemical regions, i.e. southern Hessen, Germany and Rhone-Alpes, France. These two areas have both undergone drastic restructuring since the mid-1990s, due to the merger of the prominent chemical groups Hoechst and Rhone-Poulenc into Aventis. Instead of investigating the development of the core activities at Aventis, we will focus on the operations that were considered less important and consequently split off. In addition to the negative consequences produced by these activities, in our analysis we also emphasize regional opportunities which arise from competence building, reorientation and new firm formation. These processes can be viewed as re-bundling existing and new knowledge bases with other resources to help overcome economic crises and develop a new competitive edge. As such, the paper aims to contribute to a relational understanding of economic globalization and regional restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to identify regions with industrial clusters in Germany and to analyse their entrepreneurial environment. A new index employing industry data supplied from the German Federal Labour Office is used to elaborate on spatial clusters in the most concentrated Germany industries. A second data set collected as part of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), series to assess the relationship between regional clusters and entrepreneurial activities and attitudes. The paper tests the rather popular but hitherto seldomly empirically-proven hypothesis that the existence of one or several industrial cluster(s) in a region has a positive impact on the number of start-ups and attitudes in the very same region. The implications of the findings with respect to regional policies encouraging industrial clusters are discussed briefly in the concluding section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The launch of the Euro and the location of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt initially was seen as a threat to London's pre-eminent position in European financial geographies. This paper explains why in fact this was not the case. To do this, the paper is divided in two. Firstly, it reviews the literatures that help to explain financial geographies. It is argued that we need to move away from investigating attribute properties such as financial turnover and instead examine the role of networks and interdependencies in producing financial geographies. Secondly, it identifies London's dominance and Frankfurt's growth as a complementary centre through quantitative analysis and then explains how European networks and interdependencies produce this, based on insights from interviews with investment bankers and insurance institution workers in the two cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biotechnology is considered one of the key advanced technology sectors of the future. Its development is conditional on basic research in technologically advanced research institutes and appropriately qualified human resources. The optimum environment stimulating the development of biotechnology is that of production centres having joint industrial and R&D operations. The growth of this sector in Germany began later than in the USA or other West European countries. But, thanks to the regional policy pursued by the state stimulating the development of biotechnology clusters, in a period of fifteen years or so, Germany has become the global leader. This paper presents the process of developing biotechnology centres in Germany as well as their spatial distribution, accompanied by their short description. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every country in the world is characterised by a heterogeneous spatial structure and the existence of regional disparities, and the aim of regional policy is to moderate these inequalities in the spatial development of economic activities. There are certain countries where spatial disparities are extremely large and areas lagging behind belong to one specific geographic area which feature a dual economic structure. There are, specifically, two large areas amongst the developed countries of the European Union whose economic performance lags behind the EU average and whose development paths are unique in many ways. An investigation into the unique development specifics of these two large, but coherent, territories - the regions of Southern Italy (the Mezzogiorno) and Eastern Germany - has attracted the interest of regional scientists for a long time. Today, the name "Mezzogiorno" is synonymous with long-term underdevelopment, whilst the other large area in question was reintegrated into the "mother country" after half a century of separation. Underdevelopment can be detected in almost all elements of the economy, the infrastructure and living conditions. Post-WW2, political constraints forced the German states to strike out along new paths. Five East German Länder and East Berlin were under Soviet occupation, and the planned economy of the German Democratic Republic created in 1949 gave rise to specific patterns of socio-economic development. The development rate of the previously advanced German provinces was considerably lower in the newly formed state than in West German Länder, and in the year of German reunification, labour productivity indices of East German areas were one-third of the West German average. Nevertheless, in the first years of the 2000s, the East German states showed more rapid convergence with the developed regions' average values than did the Southern Italian regions. The present paper aims to explore how various eras have left their mark on the recent regional development of East German states (Länder), what kinds of spatial transformation have occurred, what factors can be detected behind these changes and how spatial disparities have evolved in this vast, but backward, area in the developed Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable transitions in the energy sector have gained only insufficient attention in economic geography so far. Conversely, transition scholars do not pay sufficient attention to the spatial dimension of these dynamics. This paper introduces a conceptual framework for analysing the spatial characteristics of market formation processes in emerging technological innovation systems, thus proposing a shared field of research for economic geographers and transition scholars. Drawing on a social constructivist analysis of market formation processes, we propose to differentiate “market formation” into three sub-processes for which we additionally specify spatial characteristics: (1) the formation of market segments, (2) market transactions and (3) end-user profiles. We apply this conceptual and explanatory framework to explain the uneven geography of photovoltaic market formation in Germany, the current world market leader in this field. By analysing the role of local solar initiatives in shaping and supporting local market formation processes, we are able to provide a more encompassing explanation of the German PV success story than alternative accounts that merely focus on strong incentive structures and favourable geophysical conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The discipline of Anglo-American economic geography seems to care little about its history. Its practitioners tend toward the 'just do it' school of scholarship, in which a concern with the present moment in economic geography subordinates all else. In contrast, I argue that it is vital to know economic geography's history. Historical knowledge of our discipline enables us to realize that we are frequently 'slaves of some defunct' economic geographer; that we cannot escape our geography and history, which seep into the very pores of the ideas that we profess; and that the full connotations of economic geographic ideas are sometimes purposively hidden, secret even, revealed only later by investigative historical scholarship. My antidote: 'notes from the underground,' which means a history of economic geography that delves below the reported surface. This history is often subversive, contradicting conventional depictions; it is antirationalist, querying universal (timeless) foundations; it seeks out deliberately hidden and buried economic geographic practices, relying on sources literally found underground-personal papers and correspondence stored in one subterranean archive or another. To exemplify the importance of notes from the underground, I present an extended case study-the 20th-century development of central place theory, associated with two economic geographers: the German, Walter Christaller (1893-1969), and the American, Edward L. Ullman (1912-76). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern theoretical concepts in economic geography are used to try to explain the positive sides of geographical clustering of industries. Of the few theoretical concepts which are used to try to explain the negative sides of clustering, that is, the decline of old industrial areas, evolutionary regional economics, in general, and the lock-in concept, in particular, are promising ones. Lock-ins have been furthest developed by Grabher in his study on the steel and coal-mining complex in the Ruhr Area, Germany. They can be considered as thick interfirm, institutional, and cognitive tissues aimed at preserving existing industrial structures and therefore unnecessarily slowing down industrial renewal. It is particularly in regions with political lock-ins in which the legacy of manufacturing endures. On the basis of a study on the restructuring of the textile industry in Westmünsterland in Germany, in this paper I analyse whether these kinds of lock-ins can also be observed in regions with strong concentrations of the textile industry, an industry that strongly differs from the above-mentioned steel and coal-mining complex. I show that the impact of lock-ins can be regarded as relatively weak in the textile region of Westmünsterland. Partly because of that, industrial renewal has been relatively successful, which in turn has kept lock-ins weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We extend in this analysis an approach introduced by Patterson and suggested by Möller and Tassinopoulos. Our approach uses a generalization of an econometric analogue of the common shift-share method, suggested here as a new “workhorse” for regional analyses. The results obtained with this shift-share-regression, and with very differentiated data from the employment statistics of eastern Germany, show that processes of deconcentration play a role in explaining regional disparities, since inverse localization and positive urbanization effects are visible. The relevant processes can be understood by implementing approaches of “new economic geography”, structural change and endogenous growth theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]