This aim of this paper is to present the objectives and scope of an evolutionary approach to economic geography. We argue that the goal is not only to utilise the concepts and ideas from evolutionary economics (and evolutionary thinking more broadly) to help interpret and explain how the...

The evolutionary turn in economic geography has proposed that regional diversification is a path-dependent process whereby new industries grow out of preexisting industrial structures through technologically related localized knowledge spillover. This paper examines if this also applies for...

The relatedness between the technologies used among firms in a region is thought to affect the nature and scope of knowledge spillovers. In this paper, we set out how the concepts of technological relatedness and related variety have enriched recent literature in economic geography. First,...

We propose a framework that specifies the process of economic development as an evolutionary branching process of product innovations. Each product innovation provides a growth opportunity for an existing firm or a new firm, and for an existing city or a new city. One can then obtain both firm...

We propose an evolutionary perspective on the geography of network formation that is grounded in a dynamic proximity framework. In doing so, we root the proximity concept in an evolutionary approach to the geography of innovation networks. We discuss three topics. The first topic focuses on...

Related variety is important to regional growth because it induces knowledge transfer between complementary sectors at the regional level. This is accomplished through three mechanisms: spinoff dynamics, labor mobility and network formation. They transfer knowledge across related sectors, which...

The micro-meso-macro approach is an analytical framework to study processes of economic evolution. In economic geography it has been hardly taken up so far. Using the example of spatial implications of corporate processes of adaption and renewal after structural interruptions, this paper shows...

We investigate how variety affects the innovation output of a region. Borrowing arguments from theories of recombinant innovation, we expect that related variety will enhance innovation as related technologies are more easily recombined into a new technology. However, we also expect that...

Klepper’s theory of industry clustering based on organizational reproduction and inheritance through spinoffs challenged the Marshallian view on industry clustering. The paper provides an assessment of Klepper’s theoretical and empirical work on industry clustering. We explore how ‘new’...

This paper investigates the extent to which merger and acquisition activity contributed to the spatial clustering of the Dutch banking industry in Amsterdam. This analysis is based on a unique database of all banks in the Netherlands that existed in the period 1850-1993. We found that spatial...