The present paper investigates the role of decentralisation for the adaptability of production networks in clusters. It develops a simulation model able to test to what extent decentralised, networked clusters with many small firms (Silicon Valley) can be more adjustable than those composed of...

Evolutionary approaches in economics have gathered increasing support over the last 25 years. Despite an impressive body of literature, economists are still far from formulating a coherent research paradigm. The multitude of approaches in evolutionary economics poses problems for the development...

How do changes in the spatial organization of entrepreneurial firms come about? This paper provides a conceptualisation of the process of locational change. A process model of locational change is constructed on the basis of an empirical study of 109 locational events during the life course of...

Although there is growing evidence on the role of agglomeration economies in the formation and growth of firms, both the concepts of agglomeration economies and entrepreneurship tend to be ambiguously defined and measured in the literature. In this study, we aim to improve the conceptualisations...

In recent years, economic geographers have seized on the concepts of ‘path dependence’ and ‘lock-in’ as key ingredients in constructing an evolutionary approach to their subject. However, they have tended in to invoke these notions without a proper examination of the ongoing discussion...

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...

This paper explores the relationship existing among the heterogeneous nature of firms in industrial clusters, their structural position in knowledge networks and their performance. Following the rising interest for spatially agglomerated industrial firms and their learning and innovative...

The paper investigates the diversified patterns of outsourcing in the Lombardy region and relates them to the probability of introducing product and process innovation. Based on a large firm-level survey, we show that outsourcing processes are strongly regionally embedded and that offshoring is...

This paper studies the impact of an existing industrial structure in a region on the number of start-ups in this region. The aim is to detect path-dependencies in the regional industry structure. To this end we study empirically the regional factors that influence start-up rates. The approach...

This paper contributes to the debate on localized knowledge externalities as potential source for firm productivity gains. We apply multilevel analysis to link firm productivity (and growth) to knowledge intensive spatial contexts in the Netherlands. If localized knowledge externalities are...