The analysis of qualitative regional change requires an approach that is able to cope with these changes from a relational perspective. While the proximity concept explains the spatiality of relations at a particular point in time and describes them in terms of proximity and distance, a dynamic...

Urban economic growth and industrial clustering is traditionally explained by Marshallian agglomeration economies benefiting co-located firms. The focus on firms rather than people has been challenged by Florida arguing that urban amenities and a tolerant climate attract creative people, and the...

Up till now, the literature on Internet adoption by retailers paid little attention to spatial variables. Using data on 27,000 retail outlets in the Netherlands, we investigate the geographical diffusion of Internet adoption by Dutch retailers. More precise, we examine to what extent retail...

This paper aims to explore the effect of regional differences on the performance of software firms in the Netherlands. Inspired by evolutionary economics, we account for the impact of (1) co-location and sharing a local knowledge base; (2) pre-entry experience in the same or related industries;...

In this paper, we study whether industrial relatedness affects firms’ fixed investment behaviour, and whether this relationship is linked also to the operational and organizational proximity between banks and local economies. By estimating different specifications of a dynamic investment...

Over the past couple of decades or so, there have been increasing moves within evolutionary theory to move beyond the neo-Darwinian principles of variety, selection and retention, and to incorporate development. This has led to a richer palette of concepts, mechanisms and models of evolution and...

Relying on a unique dataset of small, machine-tool firms located in Emilia Romagna, Italy, we estimate the separate effects of industrial relatedness and social capital on the propensity to fully or partially outsource production activities. We focus on a series of 29 production phases, for...

Although it has frequently been argued that the quality of institutions affects the innovative potential of a territory, the link between institutions and innovation remains a black box. This paper aims to shed light on how institutions shape innovative capacity, by focusing on how regional...

What has happened in the global wine industry is extremely interesting from a catch up point of view because the latecomers in the international market have radically changed how wine is produced, sold and consumed. Until the end of the 1980s the international market for wine was without a doubt...

This paper analyzes the process of industrial diversification in the EU-27 and ENP countries in the period 1995-2010 by means of world trade data derived from the BACI database (elaborated UN Comtrade data). Our results show that in both the EU-27 and the ENP countries, the evolution of the...