This article attempts to explore how key notions from Evolutionary Economics, such as selection, path-dependency, chance and increasing returns, may be applied to two key topics in Economic Geography. The first issue is the problem of how to specify the (potential) impact of the spatial...

In this article a theoretical framework will be presented to aid understanding of the functioning of property markets, more particularly the Dutch property market. It will be argued that traditional urban economic theories are not able to explain the structure and processes of the built...

The principal objective of this paper is to formulate some possible links between evolutionary economics and regional policy, a topic that has not (yet) been covered by the literature. We firstly give a brief overview of some issues of regional policy, conceived as a strategy to influence the...

Regional economic analysis relies heavily on the concept of knowledge spillovers to explain economic development. But this concept is too limited since it does not explain the actual transfer of knowledge. That requires looking into social networks and social capital in order to explain the flow...

Knowledge is considered as a main source of economic growth for nations and regions. It is the basis for technological development and for increasing the productivity of capital and labour. This paper explores the question whether urban regions offer effective contexts for the development of...

The cluster literature suffers from a number of shortcomings: (1) by and large, cluster studies do not take into account that firms in a cluster are heterogeneous in terms of capabilities; (2) cluster studies tend to overemphasize the importance of place and geographical proximity and...

The traditional district literature tends to assume that: (1) the competitiveness of firms depends on external sources of knowledge; (2) all firms in a district benefit from knowledge externalities; (3) relying on external knowledge relationships necessarily means these are confined to the...

The paper explains the commonalities and differences between neoclassical, institutional and evolutionary approaches that have been influential in economic geography during the last couple of decades. For all three approaches, we argue that they are in agreement in some respects and in conflict...

The industrial rise of the Third Italy has been characterized by the growth of dynamic networks of flexible small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are spatially concentrated in specialized industrial districts. This network type of coordination has been associated with horizontal,...