In the US and Europe many clusters initiatives have recently been launched. National and regional governments have been defining and implementing clusters policies and programmes with the aim to identifying, launching and finally consolidating international competitive clusters in their...

Economic activity tends to cluster. This results in productivity gains. For policy makers this offers an opportunity to formulate and promote policies that foster clustering of economic activity. Paradoxically, although agglomeration rents are often found in empirical research a rationale for...