Regional integration has been seen in Africa as a means of encouraging trade and securing economies of scale. This paper examines in detail the prospects and challenges for trade expansion in the two most prominent arrangements in eastern and southern Africa: the Common Market for Eastern and...

For two decades now the cluster and network concept has been associated with economic growth and an upgrade of the local economic structure by many regional political actors. At the same time, although this concept is an extremely popular instrument of regional structural development among...

Cooke P., Clifton N. and Oleaga M. (2005) Social capital, firm embeddedness and regional development, Regional Studies 39 , 1065-1077. This paper presents the results of a research project examining the effects of social capital on the performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in...

Taymaz E. and Kilicaslan Y. (2005) Determinants of subcontracting and regional development: an empirical study on Turkish textile and engineering industries, Regional Studies 39 , 633-645. Recent studies on small- and medium-sized establishments emphasize the importance of networking and...

Support of agriculture is justified, among others, by its contribution to rural economic development. Nevertheless, the relation between agricultural and general economic development may be ambiguous. On the one side, agriculture may affect other sectors positively via multiplier and income...