The emergence of new technology-based sectors at the regional level: a proximity-based analysis of nanotechnology

This paper analyzes the emergence of new technology-based sectors at the regional level. We focus on the specific case of nanotechnology as representative of an industry based on a technology still in infancy whose evolution can be reliably traced on the basis of filed patent submissions. We implement a methodological framework based on the „product-space? approach, which allows us to investigate whether the development of new technologies is linked to the structure of the existing local knowledge base. We use patent data over the period 1986-2006 to carry out the analysis at the NUTS 2 level over the EU 15 countries. The results of the descriptive and econometric analysis supports the idea that history matters in the spatial development of a sector, and that the technological competences accumulated at the local level are likely to shape the future patterns of technological diversification.