This article studies path dependent regional structural change using a quantitative framework. Based on an inter-relatedness indicator, the degree to which local skill-bases exist and force local economies onto a path-dependent development trajectory is studied. The main question is into which...

Who introduces structural change in regional economies: Entrepreneurs or existing firms? And do local or non-local firms and entrepreneurs create most novelty in a region? Using matched employer-employee data for the whole Swedish workforce, we determine how unrelated and therefore how novel the...

Cities vary with regard to the characteristics of their economic life. A formal model by Duranton and Puga (2001) suggests a division of labour between diversified and specialized cities. Diversified cities (the “nursery cities”) provide a fertile environment for search and innovation....

In this paper we measure technological relatedness between industries using a dataset on product portfolios of plants. For this purpose we first develop a general methodology to extract data on co-occurrences of classes (e.g. industries) in a single entity (e.g. a plant) to construct estimates...

Using dynamic panel data methods on UK counties (1841-1971), we investigate long-term employment dynamics in seven distinct local industries. We study how industries benefit from specialised environments (MAR), diverse local economies (Jacobs’) and large local markets (urbanization), and, in...

The question of how new regional growth paths emerge has been raised by many leading economic geographers. From an evolutionary perspective, there are strong reasons to believe that regions are most likely to branch into industries that are technologically related to the preexisting industries...