Knowledge externalities, innovation clusters and regional development

摘要

Economic geographers and regional economists have been approaching issues of regional innovativeness and knowledge spillovers from different - though complementary - angles. While economic geographers have put more emphasis on understanding the complex and context-specific nature of factors driving innovation success and knowledge spillovers, regional economists have put more emphasis on identifying these factors in a more general context. The main contribution of this book to the empirical literature is, in my view, that it helps narrow somewhat the gap between these two approaches. It comprises several papers that pursue promising strategies for developing statistical indicators that, on the one hand, reflect the complexity of innovation and knowledge externalities, and, on the other hand, are suited for econometric analysis. Factor analysis turns out to be a useful tool for developing statistical indicators of 'knowledge economies' (chapter 13) or 'regional innovation systems' (chapter 7).