Abstract The disruptions following the COVID-19 pandemic revealed many vulnerabilities of the fragmented global economy. Simultaneously, the pandemic disrupted regional production, hindering regional value creation. In Germany, the Bavarian beer sector received high prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, both for its symbolic cultural role and its economic impact. The strong role of exports and global reputation for the sectoral development makes it a relevant case at the interface of Global Production Network (GPN) and regional economic resilience debates. The prior concept places a strong focus on power and value creation but predominantly explains regional development based on exogenous factors. Meanwhile, the latter contributes arguments on regional adaptation to different kinds of crises but rarely operationalises them in relation to specific regional value chains and their relation to global markets. Hence, this contribution examines regional adaptation from a GPN perspective. Applying a mixed-methods approach, the study combines secondary data with a structured content analysis of newspaper articles. It thereby focuses on regional value creation and its multi-scalar linkages to understand the development during the crisis in the Bavarian beer sector. The analysis combines a value-creation mapping to quantify development with a governance mapping to intersect arguments of value, power, and embeddedness. The regional sector demonstrated notable stability and short-term recoveries. Strategic embedding through global linkages and regional embeddedness by regional lead firms was a key resource for overall regional adaptation.
This paper advances economic geography by shifting the analytical focus from innovation exploration to exploitation. While the established distinction between Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) and Doing, Using and Interacting (DUI) explains how innovations emerge, it overlooks how firms secure and sustain access to technologies. We introduce Freedom to Operate (FTO) as a unifying rationale for innovation exploitation, integrating patenting, disclosure, and secrecy into a relational framework that accounts for third-party behavior. Drawing on an in-depth case study of family firms in Heilbronn-Franconia, we identify three distinct strategies that structure firms' practices: exclusivity, selectivity, and inclusivity. Our findings reveal that firms combine different practices to maximize FTO, often foregoing patents despite active R&D investment. This perspective extends prevailing innovation frameworks and offers policy-relevant insights for supporting SMEs as they navigate complex technological landscapes.
This paper explores how processes of valuation and revaluation shape regional restructuring during the post-carbon transformation of Lusatia, a former lignite mining region in eastern Germany. It addresses the issue of ongoing polarisation between top-down transition policies and local resistance stemming from economic and cultural marginalisation. Conventional regional analyses, focused on governance or structural adaptation, have overlooked the influence of differing value systems and their revisions on pathways of change. This paper introduces a pragmatist theory of valuation to investigate how stakeholders – i.e. local actors, external experts, and policymakers – negotiate the various meanings of progress, sustainability, and belonging within experimental planning settings. Empirical research draws on the ‘Planning Lab Lusatia 2050’, an innovative participatory project which provided a temporary arena for revaluating local resources, practices, and identities. The findings show that revaluation processes enable new alignments between differently situated values, foster recognition of alternative post-growth initiatives, and stimulate mutual learning across institutional and social boundaries. The paper contributes to regional analysis and discussions on regional shifts in economic geography by proposing “geographies of valuation” as a distinct conceptual framework that sheds light on the drivers of regional change. This approach highlights valuation as a dynamic social practice that can easily trigger regional transitions. It offers a novel lens through which to understand and facilitate context-sensitive, value-based transformations into locally acceptable futures for regions that have previously been contested.
We present a model of urban leapfrogging in which urban agglomeration may be induced by agglomeration in amenities as well as productivity. We distinguish between urban 'overtaking' where one city gradually moves ahead of another and urban 'leapfrogging', where a city leaps past the incumbents in terms of population and economic activity. We show that the former occurs when spatial general equilibrium is unique. The latter arises when there are multiple spatial equilibria. Multiple spatial equilibria are induced by the interplay between urban agglomeration in amenities as well as in productivity. The model is applied to a case study of the origins of agglomeration in pre-state Israel. Founded in 1909, by the 1930's Tel Aviv had become the dominant city of Mandatory Palestine rapidly leapfrogging over other contenders such as Jaffa, Jerusalem and especially Haifa. Using limited data sources, we test for a social amenities wage premium in Tel Aviv, the determinants of residential choice for new arrivals, and the agglomerative point of no return. We suggest that the predominance of Tel Aviv was largely due to social agglomeration rather than to agglomeration in production. In addition, we suggest that the absence of an urban legacy can promote leapfrogging. We conclude with some observations on the relevance of our findings to contemporary agglomeration processes.
Unfavorable economic conditions, demographic decline and institutional constraints all make it difficult for peripheralized regions to implement policies conducive to regional development. This article uses the example of the East German region of Saxony-Anhalt to analyze the ways in which these negative contextual conditions affect the negotiation of ideas in policy design and their implementation by operational stakeholders. Based on expert interviews in the context of current skilled labor recruitment, the study shows that adverse contextual conditions limit the perceived ability of operational stakeholders to act, thus limiting the intended scope of activities. As a result, stakeholders risk further peripheralization for the region. This article contributes to the debate on uneven development by emphasizing the role of individual stakeholders within institutions and the interplay between historical, spatial, and institutional factors in shaping policies.
Global environmental crisis such as climate change, and its attenuated energy transition demand a fundamental rethinking of the political and ethical foundations that have shaped modern political economy. Economic geography with its focus on placed-based dynamics, relational operation and tacit knowledge, offers a vital lens to explore these challenges. This article expands the analytical toolkit of economic geography by examining contrasting paradigms of space and time in Western and Indigenous philosophical thought, drawing insights from scholars ranging from Aristotle to Vine Deloria Jr. Through case studies of offshore wind energy development in the United States, the article illustrates how these differing worldviews shape different understandings of finance, power, and environmental responsibility. Energy systems are not just technical systems; they are inherently political and moral. They necessitate explicit ethical frameworks that prioritize social engagement and community benefit over private gains. I argue for a grounded approach to energy transition that integrates externalities - both positive and negative. I emphasize relational responsibility in economic practices. By foregrounding ethical principles in energy transitions, scholars of economic geography can foster pathways to more equitable and sustainable practices that better align with ecological and social realities.
This study extends evolutionary economic geography to science by mapping how regional scientific capabilities emerge and evolve across Europe. Using Web of Science publications (2000-2017) geo-coded to 1,216 regions in 35 countries and classified into 228 subjects, we construct a pan-European "Science Space" based on subject co-occurrence and relatedness, and test whether relatedness density, i.e., the embeddedness of a subject in a region's existing portfolio, predicts subsequent entry (Revealed Scientific Advantage >= 1). Network evidence shows Europe's science system becoming more interdisciplinary, with technology-adjacent subjects (e.g., nanoscience, robotics, computer science) gaining centrality, while Life Sciences & Biomedicine remain dominant by volume. Econometric results (pooled OLS and GLM for binary entry, with region/subject/period fixed effects and controls for the regional economy and knowledge base) indicate that higher relatedness density significantly raises the likelihood of scientific entry. The effect is stronger in non-metropolitan regions and when a subject's initial RSA is very low, consistent with relatedness seeding new capabilities rather than merely consolidating near-threshold strengths. These findings generalise the principle of relatedness from technology to science and advise regional innovation policy to prioritise adjacent scientific opportunities, invest in bridging infrastructures, and design interdisciplinary platforms where relatedness density is high but specialisation has not yet emerged.
Corporations are increasingly held to account for their environmental performance given the looming climate crisis and its local and global footprints. It is observed that mobilising knowledge for superior environmental performance is challenging given the disputed authority of corporate officers, the variable value of expertise, and the ambivalence of investors as to the costs and benefits of such commitments. Not surprisingly, major corporations are beset by conflict over the allocation and use of scarce management resources. Recognising the challenges of mobilising knowledge to give effect to net-zero, this paper deploys Meric Gertler's classic papers on codified and tacit knowledge to better understand the nature and scope of corporate environmental management and innovation. Focusing upon Anglo-America corporations, implications are drawn with respect to the challenges facing multi-product and multi-jurisdictional corporations in adapting the emerging world of net-zero.
We argue that research universities are best understood as regional systems of learning rather than stand-alone organizations. We introduce the concept of the university complex, a regional agglomeration of multiple universities whose complementarities and competition jointly shape knowledge production, talent attraction, and local spillovers. Using comparable indicators across U.S. Metropolitan Areas and selected global regions, we show that multi-university complexes outperform single-university regions on measures of scientific output and exhibit more diverse specialization profiles. We also show that universities in complexes do not empirically trade-off between economies of scale and economies of scope. These results contribute to the regional innovation systems literature by showing that 'ivory towers' are deeply regionalized.
This paper examines the transition of Norway's oil and gas sector towards low carbon intensive industries, focusing on offshore wind and aquaculture. Using a multi-method approach that combines stakeholder interviews with a review of governmental white papers from 1971 to 2023, the study identifies key barriers and opportunities in knowledge transfer and industrial diversification. The findings highlight the importance of long term policy direction and coordinated involvement in facilitating sustainable industrial transitions. The study contributes to the literature on sustainability transitions by providing practical insights based on the Norwegian experience with such transitions. Our findings emphasise the value of contextualising contemporary sustainable industrial restructuring, with historical experiences of similar large-scale processes of change offering a more nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities in sustainable industrial development.
We examine the role of tacit knowledge and the need for proximity in shaping the geography of the sell-side equity research, as one of the most knowledge intensive parts of the financial sector, which forecasts the value of firms, and as such has major significance for the whole economy. We use a unique combination of professional experience, a purpose-built quantitative dataset on analysts' coverage, and extensive expert interview material. Our analysis, focused on three highly globalised sectors (metals & mining, oil & gas, and semiconductors), documents the leading positions of Toronto, Calgary & Houston, and Taipei & San Francisco, respectively, as sell-side equity research centers, matching or exceeding the role of New York or London as global financial centers. We argue that this geography reflects the continued significance of specialised and localised tacit knowledge, which is crucial to sell-side equity analysts for three inter-related reasons: the need for preferential access to local information and knowledge networks in the forecasting process; the importance of individual interpretative and analytical expertise; and the growing pressure for rapid analysis and response to new information. In short, equity analysts have to 'be there', at the sources of industry-specific information and knowledge.
Trade fairs operate as temporary clusters and temporary markets that bring together representatives from an organizational field for the purpose of making business and exchanging knowledge. Intrinsic to these events and the global buzz they generate are innovation dynamics, wherein participants' desire to become more effective in finding transaction partners, leading to continuous product changes. Search processes for new products and technologies at these events tend to prioritize choices that fit the specific production context of searching firms and create a trend toward technological specialization within larger production systems, instead of automatically driving convergence. All of this suggests that market and production relations should not be viewed as being separated, as in much contemporary work, but as fundamentally linked, and that trade fairs play a critical role in creating this connection between market and innovation dynamics.
This paper explores the intersection of international business and economic geography through the lens of connectivity and complementarity of locations. Both facets are leveraged by economic agents like multinational enterprises (MNEs). Complementarity highlights the value created by integrating diverse locational assets, addressing why locations are connected, while connectivity focuses on how linkages are established and maintained. Our framework highlights the reciprocity between the dimensions of complementarity and connectivity to foster intellectual dialogue between the two fields of international business and economic geography. Disrupted global value chains and the digital transformation of economic activities are substantially reshaping the complementarity and connectivity of locations. In this context, we emphasize the need to incorporate technological, socio-political, environmental, and geopolitical dimensions into the analysis of MNE-location interaction.
‘Left behind places’ have received increasing attention in the Global North, acknowledging growing regional inequalities between and within countries. Yet the trajectories followed by these places have mostly been investigated by assessing changes between two distant time-points. Aiming to provide more detailed insights into regional development pathways, we combine k-means clustering and sequence analysis to study detailed regional trajectories between 1982 and 2017 for EU15 NUTS3 regions. The resulting typology of trajectories evidences how some regions have increasingly or more recently ‘fallen behind’, some have remained ‘left behind’, and still others have experienced overall positive change over decades, at least temporarily catching-up on wealthier regions. As such, our findings suggest different transitions in and out of demographic and economic ‘left-behindness’.
This paper examines how aerospace clusters help shape the innovation dynamics of aerospace manufacturers in the environmental transition to develop sustainable commercial aircraft. It intersects the economic geography, innovation, and sustainability literatures to develop a theoretical framework about the conditions that facilitate such a transition, and uses the case of two major aerospace clusters, Montreal and Toulouse, as a testing ground. Using a mixed-methods approach combining social network analysis and a series of interviews with some of the key actors in each cluster, the main findings of the study highlight a major difference between the two clusters: while in Toulouse the transition towards sustainability is a top-down approach orchestrated by the crucial role of public authorities, in Montreal the transition is a bottom-up one initiated by an active group of actors from aerospace firms and university research centers. The study also suggests some paradoxical outcomes of collaboration and competition between the two aerospace clusters during this process of environmental transition. Our study aims to contribute new insights to the literature on sustainability transitions in clusters and to develop implications for cluster research and policy-making.
Much of the work on industrial location, internationalization and innovation is based on firm- or firm-network-level research, but does not consider the role of industry-based professional communities that can be crucial in providing access to knowledge, resources and personal networks. These communities, whose membership reaches well beyond firms themselves, are indispensable components of firms’ everyday activities, yet are often overlooked when investigating firm behavior. This paper focuses on the one hand on the role of local communities and those individuals that form them, and on the other hand on how they link with international communities and become crucial facilitators of internationalization processes. In a co-evolutionary perspective, we investigate the role of local professional communities and the local-global interfaces that are created in internationalization processes, and how such localized activity may be associated with regional development. In a conceptual discussion, we propose that local professional communities and their local-international community connections are crucial to the capacity to engage in internationalization projects. From this, we discuss a number of related questions: First, who are the members of local professional communities and how do they create knowledge? Second, how do local professional communities develop and what are the driving forces that underlie their growth? Third, what are the conditions for the reproduction of local professional communities? We conclude by highlighting that the interrelationship between local and international communities is a critical feature of a permissive environment that facilitates corporate success in the internationalization process, and this favorable interaction between firms and their environment equally impacts the development prospects of the city-regions where they are located.
The pandemic and the last years’ geopolitical disruptions have laid bare the vulnerability of Europe’s supply chains, as well as the challenges posed by insecure oil and gas supplies. In this contribution, we aim to add to this debate by raising awareness of the vulnerability of trade and supply chain infrastructure between Europe and Asia. We give an overview of the risks for supply chain securities due to the risk of military and armed conflicts and geopolitical challenges more broadly, illustrated by a map of central logistic corridors and hubs. We further discuss the contemporary implications for each corridor due to the war in Ukraine. By making use of the example of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), we argue that trade along these corridors is highly interdependent and that the continued conflict in Ukraine poses a danger for independent, diversified and resilient trade across Eurasia. The paper calls for future research in economic geography, military geographies and related international business literature to (jointly) reemphasize the economic geographies of war, by for instance analysing shifts in global value chains and global production networks as a result of violent conflicts.
Abstract This editorial revisits the state – global production network (GPN) nexus in times of multiple crises affecting the global economy and society. Setting the scene, we first reflect on the role of geopolitics in transforming GPNs under conditions of increasing uncertainty before turning our attention to the ways in which states deal with questions of security and navigate risk. It also highlights the increasingly overt role of strategic state strategies vis-a-vis GPNs. In a second step, we discuss the central, constitutive role of the state in processes of strategic coupling, decoupling and recoupling, before presenting some concluding thoughts.
In this paper, we suggest that Global Production Network (GPN) scholars have yet to deal more substantively with how nation-states, often in alliance with firm actors, actively work to create markets for resources in global production networks. We argue in this paper that GPN scholars should be better attuned to both resource-making interventions and the governance of market development. Resource-making highlights the heterogeneity of the biophysical characteristics of physical entities which entails that certain natures are not readily made available as commodities in markets, but require specific infrastructures, technology, and organizational structures for commercialization. When private capital fails to create markets for resources on its own initiative, states may intervene by facilitating resource-making and governing market development through configurations of ownership, commodification, and risk allocation. In this paper, we explore how the relationship between resource-making and market governance shapes the possibilities and limitations for state strategies in global production networks. Our discussion in the paper is informed by an empirical case study of failed plans by the Indonesian government from 2016 to 2019 to draw upon public-private partnerships to create markets for LNG in the peripheral regions of the country. Despite Indonesia's status as a globally significant LNG exporter, we find that the interorganizational structures and infrastructure needed to deliver natural gas to markets in peripheral regions contradict with the configurations of ownership, commodification, and risk allocation through which the Indonesian government has sought to realize state strategies, thus resulting in the underdevelopment of liquefied natural gas markets in Indonesia.
