Evolutionary economic geography: how and why regional economies change across time

Some of the main ideas that this book explores are: how regional resources condition the specialization and future direction of change in regional economies (some call them “paths”); and how, with globalization, resources readily imported from other regions fundamentally influence how economic change happens. As we know, the conditioning of economic change on space and time may have positive as well as negative outcomes. The economic histories of regions enable, as much as they restrict, change. History is a mixed blessing.

Evolutionary research into regional economies provides an intellectual backdrop, or theoretical basis, to such ideas. Recent research has uncovered a great deal about how long- term regional economic change and regional growth actually happens (Boschma & Frenken 2006; Boschma & Martin 2010). The evolutionary economic geography approach works in the tradition of the Austro- American economist Joseph Schumpeter, and it recognizes innovation, technological change and the diffusion of technologies as the most important drivers behind economic change and growth. In essence, evolutionary theories work from the basic assumption that firm competition takes place in free markets, and that the economy operates under the normal institutional structures that characterize liberal market economy modes of governance. However, there is plenty to be said about the relationships between the role of government and economic evolution, and we return to this throughout the book. Even if we assume that competition is something that concerns firms in liberal markets, this does not mean that markets can provide all regional resources, nor that markets will work without regulation.

It is important to note that the evolutionary focus is not without complications. There are many competing and complementing approaches to this particular view of economic change, or at least to where it places its emphasis. Yet, much recent regional research has found value in the “neo- Schumpeterian” view.