Over the past few years, scholarly debates on new path development have attracted increasing attention within the economic geography literature. This work distinguishes various trajectories of regional and industrial evolution. So far, these evolutionary trajectories have been mainly conceptualized as 'positive' forms of path development. However, in reality, many regions are undergoing phases that can be characterized as 'negative' trajectories. Despite their potentially detrimental social and political effects, negative pathways have to date largely been ignored in the extant literature. This paper seeks to shed light on the 'dark side' of path development by outlining a typology of 'pathways of decline'. Three forms of negative pathways are identified, namely path contraction, path downgrading and path delocalization. Empirical illustrations are provided for each of them.

No abstract

No abstract

Universities and other knowledge institutions have quickly come to be seen as central to smart specialisation. However, their exact role in Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3) has yet to receive much critical attention in the academic literature. This is particularly notable as defining features of smart specialisation-such as the entrepreneurial dynamic of the strategy-formation process, and differentiated nature of the goals for strategies in regions with varying research and innovation capabilitiesrepresent challenges to the notion that public research organisations should be drivers of smart specialisation in all regions. This paper articulates these conceptual tensions and then explores how they are unfolding in practice with particular reference to regions with less-developed research and innovation systems. The empirical material is drawn from a European-wide survey of institutional factors affecting the implementation of RIS3 and two regional case studies from Central and Eastern Europe. Overall the paper reveals a multifaceted picture of still emerging (and potentially conflicting) dynamics around the introduction of smart specialisation that have the potential to reconfigure the role of universities in regional innovation systems in Europe.

No abstract

No abstract

An influential body of literature suggests that economic diversity rather than specialization fuels the economic performance of regions and nations. The authors argue that this hypothesis has no universal applicability and that a more differentiated view is needed. In particular, historical specificity of the local environment and structural characteristics of regional economies should be taken into account. They focus on the effects of industrial specialization on economic performance and the vulnerability of Central European post-communist regions, namely Czech microregions with less than 200,000 inhabitants. They examine whether the economic performance and vulnerability of these regions is fuelled rather by industrial specialization or diversity when controlling for other potential determinants of regional economic performance. Their findings show that the dependence of Czech regions on manufacturing correlates with higher economic performance but also with higher regional vulnerability. In addition, industrial specialization within manufacturing was found to be instrumental for the economic performance of regions with high dependence on manufacturing. With a decreasing share of employment in manufacturing, industrial diversity rather than specialization becomes more valuable for the economic performance of Czech regions.

No abstract