Regional politicians regard the cluster concept as a key factor for promoting regional economic performance. They refer to a comprehensive set of theoretical and empirical literature which provides the clusters’ positive impact on regional development. Recent studies dealing with that...

This article analyses how regional employment growth in Germany is affected by related variety, unrelated variety and the functions a region performs in the production process. Following the related variety literature, we argue that regions benefit from the existence of related activities that...

"In the context of the IAB Job Vacancy Survey (EGS) firms were asked if they had to cancel recruitment processes for open vacancies in the year of the survey because no suitable candidates were found. It remains ambiguous if this cancellation means the actual ending of the firms' recruitment...

"Following microeconomic theory, every vacancy should be filled by appropriate manpower after a certain time. However, from an empirical point of view it is evident that vacancies remain unfilled as establishments cancel their search for a suitable applicant. The German Job Vacancy Survey (JVS)...

This paper explores the impact of industrial clusters on regional growth at level of German labour market regions within a regional convergence model. It focuses on vertically connected industrial sectors, which can emerge parallel to horizontal interconnections. Based on works of Schnabl (2000)...

We use a combination of measures of spatial concentration, qualitative input-output analysis and innovation interaction matrices to identify the horizontal and vertical dimension of industrial clusters in Saxony in 2005. We describe the spatial allocation of the industrial clusters and show...

Regional economic policy faces the challenge of two competing policy goals - reducing regional economic disparities vs. promoting economic growth. The allocation of public funds has to weigh these goals particularly under the restriction of scarce financial re- sources. If, however, some region...

The ‘cluster theory’ has become one of the main concepts promoting regional competitiveness, innovation, and growth. As most studies focus on measures of concentration of one industrial branch in order to identify regional clusters, the appropriate analysis of specific vertical relations...