Volume 45, Issue 1

Up to now, there is very little empirical evidence to give support to the idea that certain factors lead to success of high-tech-regions. But among politicians, as well as scholars, there is an increasing consciousness that, beside the traditional location factors, cultural aspects continue to gain importance for a prospering regional development. For instance, these cultural factors comprise of smart co-operations and learning organisations. The questions remains, whether these cultural factors are crucial for the evolution of regional economies.

Peripheral and economically lagging regions are short of an adequate supply of human capital and know-how. In order to make the best use of their endogenous potential they have to be able to attract highly qualified workers from other regions. This dependency poses considerable problems; for ambitious individuals central regions are more attractive because they off er a variety of job opportunities and better career perspectives. The findings presented in this paper indicate that, as long as the Jobs offered are attractive on a national scale, there is a higher number of managers and Professionals who are willing to migrate into peripheral regions. It is the job and hardly the region that motivates a move. However, the role of culture as a location factor should not to be neglected and may even increase since interests of family members have become more important in the decision making process.

The rise of new enterprises is associated with job growth and regional economic change. Due to a lack of adequate theories, however, little is known about the job location of graduate- entrepreneurs. Primary data from surveys in Germany and the Netherlands show a strong correspondence between the brain drain of employees and entrepreneurs. Logit-models are applied to explain the locational distribution of entrepreneurs by using labour market mobility approaches for employees.

Using the example of the district of Neumarkt (Bavaria) the different kinds of Channels of distribution and value chains existing for specific agricultural products were investigated. Only an insignificant amount of these products remains “within the region”. This has to be attributed to the fact that there are hardly any companies carrying out primary processing remaining within the district. Nevertheless, there is promising potential for an intensification of regional circulation.

Territoriality is an important dimension of knowledge production and application. Despite the ethereal nature of the product itself, knowledge is thought to originate from, and be anchored to, particular places. Over the last decades, studies on themes such as Innovation Systems and knowledge spillovers have pointed at and further explored the spatial dimension of knowledge production, suggesting that due to spatial boundedness of knowledge the region presents an essential site for innovation, production and policy-makers. To review this message of regional salience three stories are presented: The first story, the institutional-economic account, features the role of the economy. The second story features political actors and processes, and the way these have promoted and mobilised the region as a significant site of innovation, production and policy-making. The third story focuses on the message of regional salience itself, with as protagonists the authors of the message, namely academics. The conclusion will bring the various stories together, suggesting how the story of performativity bears on the story on political mobilisation, and how both these stories may serve to put the institutional-economic account into perspective.

The paper evaluates the New Economic Geography in the tradition of Paul Krugman and the new (regional) growth literature of Paul Romer and others of the last decade and discusses its importance for knowledge-based regional development as well as consequences for Economic Geography. Model specifications are presented and the implication for regional, i.e. subnational, growth are discussed. Although several of the new insights developed in these theories are not that new for economic geographers with basic skills in non-neoclassical economics, it is argued that regional development as a whole can profit from the current geographical turn in economics, of which the theories reviewed here are an indicator.

Modelling the path of the regional product cycle and adding dynamic and stochastic aspects suggests the likelihood of multiple equilibria; bunches of divergent paths of the product cycle may result, depending on starting conditions and parameter size. Narrow clusters of traditional products based on localisation economies, for instance, are quite likely to age, following the traditional bell-shaped path: accelerating expansion, congestion and Saturation, sclerosis and decline. Clusters based on urbanisation economies, on the other hand, face a much lower probability of aging, and if they do, they tend to pass the stages more slowly; their greater adaptability results from the higher information density of the region. Regions characterised by coexistence of several clusters are the ones most likely to avoid aging. Neither theoretical arguments nor historical examples, however, can be found in favour of a regional cycle in literal sense: a new product cycle following the declining one necessarily or at least with some likelihood.

The paper aims to discuss the concept of the Regional Innovation Systems (RIS). Reference is made to the structural background of the discussion as well as to related concepts of Technological Innovation Systems and National Innovation Systems. Key elements of RIS like cluster, governance, institutional learning etc. as well as approaches towards models and typologies are discussed. The RIS approach is classified as a concept with high political and strategic contents and less theoretical groundings. It is argued that the concept is in need for further clarification at the level of Information flows and knowledge generation.

Recently the concept of learning has become very fashionable among academics from different economic disciplines. Economic geographers and spatial planners joined this fashion by increasingly speaking about the learning region. However, they attach different meanings to the concept. This points in the direction of what Markusen recently coined as fuzzy concepts. Fuzzy concepts are characterised by both lacking conceptual clarity, rigour in the presentation of evi dence and clear methodology, difficulties to operationalise and lacking policy relevance. This paper makes clear that the learning region can be considered as a fuzzy concept, when it comes to most of the above-mentioned characteristics. At the same time, however, the concept has a very strong policy relevance, increasingly empirical evidence and it provides new insights in path dependency and thus in unravelling the distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ industrial agglomerations. Provided that economic geographers will work hard on improving its conceptual clarity, methodology and rigour in the presentation of evidence, the concept clearly has the potential to become a sound theoretical basis for modern regional innovation policies.

It is generally assumed that cities are focal points or hubs in processes of knowledge generation and diffusion, and, consequently, centres of regional innovation Systems. This paper questions the importance of local influences in current reorganisation processes of regional knowledge Systems by making use of the triplehelix concept on innovation processes. Using the example of four knowledge Systems in the major economic clusters of the region Frankfurt/Rhein- Main - i.e. chemical industries, automobile manufacturing, biotechnology and finance -, it is concluded that the specialisation process taking place among German metropolitan regions and the emergence of Frankfurt as a hub for market access is driven mainly by non-local forces.