This paper outlines a set of fundamental changes in the global economy that have altered the nature of the innovation process, brought about global challenges, and stimulated cross border phenomena and network formation responses. These changes has brought about an increase of the demand for...

This paper focuses on the concept of knowledge and examines models depicting and explaining the role of knowledge in regional development and provides an assessment of empirical studies of how knowledge affects growth and development in functional regions. For this paper it is crucial to...

Multinational firms (MNFs) have been shown to have a set of defining characteristics. Compared to domestic firms, they have a larger fraction of skilled workers, higher R&D to sales ratios and established networks to knowledge sources in several different countries. As illustrated by the...

The understanding of economic development in regions in developed countries has gone through a fundamental change during recent decades. Nowadays, regions are increasingly looked upon as independent, dynamic market places that are connected via flows of interregional and international trade....

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between knowledge accessibility and regional economic growth in Sweden. The research question we ask in this paper is the following: can the variation between regions in knowledge accessibility in a given period explain the variation in the growth...

The link between proximity and innovation has been dwelled upon extensively in the literature. A regional economic milieu characterized by proximity between relevant actors is maintained to be suitable for establishing and maintaining successful regional innovation system. In this paper it is...

This paper investigates the role of knowledge for successful entrepreneurship. The paper explicitly discusses the role of accessibility to university and company R&D for new firm formation. Company R&D is assumed to contain a higher share of R&D directed towards generating technological...

This paper gives an overview of research on economic clusters and clustering and is motivated by the growing intellectual and political interest for the subject. Functional regions have the features that agglomeration of economic activities i.e. clusters, benefit from. Functional regions have...

Continuous product and process innovations are prerequisites for sustainable competitiveness of both nations and regions. How such innovations are created and how successful innovation processes can be initiated are therefore extremely important questions. In recent years, it has been recognized...

This paper examines the influence of accessibility to R&D on the regional diversity in Swedish export. A theoretical model with fixed R&D cost predicts that spatial knowledge spillovers generates external economies of scale in R&D activities and these external effects increase the innovative...