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Research
Research interests
- Evolutionary economics
- Econometrics
- Innovation systems in Europe
- Old industrial regions
- Lock-in
Current research project
Long-term evolution of regions
Researcher : Drs Frank Neffke
Supervision : Prof. Ron Boschma, Dr. Koen Frenken
Context : Regions show a markedly differentiated performance over the course of history. Focusing on recent history, the decline of old industrial regions sharply contrasts with the rise of high-technology clusters in such unlikely places as Silicon Valley. The literature on the growth of local industries points to agglomeration economies as an important contributor to the success of industries in certain regions. Agglomeration economies are the cost savings associated with location close to other economic activity. In general, a large concentration of economic activity is beneficial to local plants. However, agglomeration can be specialized, diversified, related or a combination of those. As industries mature, the benefits their plants can draw from the local environment change over time. Understanding how these benefits change with the maturing of technologies used in an industry may be the key to the understanding of why certain regions that have been successful go into decline, whereas other regions are able to reinvent themselves and adapt to the new environment in which they find themselves.
Aim : To ascertain the kind of agglomeration that is beneficial at particular stages of an industry's life cycle. Our hypothesis is that young industries have an appetite for diversity in their region which can generate fresh ideas, but that this diversity becomes increasingly more difficult to exploit as technology becomes more standardized. We use long-term highly-disaggregated panel datasets of regional economies to investigate the evolving relationship between the industry lifecycle and the strength of the different kinds of agglomeration externalities. In order to do so, we employ standard and dynamic panel data methods. Analyses are conducted at both the industry-regional level and at the plant level. Our data describe the UK (1841-1971) and Sweden (1974-2004). Special attention will be devoted to the links between industries, focusing on which industries are related, how relatedness between industries changes over time, and how this relatedness affects the growth patterns of regional economies.
Duration : 2004-2008
Funding source : NWO
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