Amy Glasmeier

Technological discontinuities and flexible production networks: The case of Switzerland and the world watch industry

Studies the history of the Swiss watch industry to examine adaptations to external technological change. Until the 1970s, the Swiss watch production system was flexible, cost effective, and extremely profitable. When technological shifts (advancements from electronic to digital to quartz technology) were introduced by foreign competitors, however, the Swiss lost a huge fraction of their output levels. Extensive analysis of the Swiss watch industrys early twentieth-century history -- including market changes, industry structure, global competitors, and technological change -- shows that while the network structure was flexible and effective, it was also fragmented. Thus, when the new technological regime was introduced, a myriad of organizational voices disunified the regions production complex, causing institutional inertia. Elaborate network production systems like the Swiss watch industry are far from immune to the effects of technological change: in fact, the task of shifting established organizing structures within social and industrial networks to accommodate change is even more problematic for such large, diversified entities. Ultimately, findings from this case study show that an industrys innovation and flexibility are fragile and dependent not only on production methods, but on historical circumstances and inter-firm networks as well. (CJC)

Factors Governing the Development of High Tech Industry Agglomerations: A Tale of Three Cities

GLASMEIER A. (1988) Factors governing the development of high tech industry agglomerations: a tale of three cities, Reg. Studies 22, 287–301. High tech industries are thought to precipitate structural change in local economies through the creation of backward and forward linkages and new firm spinoffs. Case studies of high tech firms and products indicate interindustry linkage development is closely associated with product type and organizational structure of firms. Three product configurations, one-of-a-kind, customized and standardized, generate differing levels of linkage and spinoff potential. Firms producing customized products with highly variable input structures and established subcontracting relationships are more amenable to linkage and spinoff creation than firms producing one-of-a-kind or standardized products. The potential for linked industry development is further diluted because the spatial expansion path of high tech firms has been through the creation of ‘technical branch plants’ which a...

THE ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF THE PRISON DEVELOPMENT BOOM ON PERSISTENTLY POOR RURAL PLACES

Prison construction experienced explosive growth over the 1980s and 1990s. Many poor rural communities invited prisons into their environs, anticipating jobs and economic development. However, with one notable exception, no ex post empirical studies exist of the economic effects of prison construction on rural counties. Following an extensive review of the literature, this research uses a quasiexperimental control group method to examine the effect of state-run prisons constructed in rural counties between 1985 and 1995 on county earnings by employment sector, population, poverty rate, and degree of economic health. Analysis suggests a limited economic effect on rural places in general, but may have a positive impact on poverty rates in persistently poor rural counties, as measured by diminishing transfer payments and increasing state and local government earnings in places with relatively good economic health. However, there is little evidence that prison impacts were significant enough to foster structural economic change.

U.S. AUTO PARTS PRODUCTION ;: AN ANALYSIS OF THE ORGANIZATION AND LOCATION OF A CHANGING INDUSTRY

Several authors contend that changes in the organization of auto assembly are resulting in a spatial reconcentration of employment in the Midwestern United States. Hypotheses about spatial reconcen...

Service-Led Rural Development: Definitions, Theories, and Empirical Evidence

Two opposing views of service-led development contend, on the one hand, that services can be a propulsive force in rural economic development and, on the other, that services are neither independent of, nor a replacement for, older forms of rural industrialization such as agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. Both views fail to account for the dualistic nature of rural services growth, which does not mirror the developmental experience commonly associated with services in the nations cities. This article reviews the literature on services and economic development, summarizes definitions, discusses national growth of rural services and recent trends, examines models of spatial distribution of services, and identifies gaps in existing knowledge.

Territory-Based Regional Development Policy and Planning in a Learning Economy The Case of ‘Real Service Centers’ in Industrial Districts

In addressing the intersections between territory-based regional industrial development programs and the challenges faced by firms in the emerging information-based economy, a prerequisite for a more holistic approach to region-wide economic policy development and planning is a public-sector strategic outlook that itself is informed about economic, sectoral and strategic trends and which is built around an understanding of organizational learning. The requirement for public sector ‘know-how’ and ‘know-why’ deviates substantially from past practice wherein the knowledge of sectoral change and economic trends was embedded in separate programs created to provide services to firms. Absent from this model is a feedback loop which builds this understanding into policy making and program design. The most common approach to sectoral programming, which involves linking sectoral problems with programmatic interventions, relies on investigations of markets, products, and production processes that form bottlenecks and areas of technological backwardness which require corrective action. Sectoral approaches should be broadened to incorporate a more complex understanding of how information-based competition is altering the business environment. Accomplishing this requires a new approach to firm-based support services that feeds directly into regional planning functions and seeks to improve this environment for both citizens and the business community.

The geography of trade policy: trade regimes and location decisions in the textile and apparel complex

Today the global spatial structure of the textile and apparel industries is evolving largely in response to trade policy. Increased foreign competition has prompted developed nations to protect their home markets. Yet rather than use the breathing room provided by protectionist policies to restructure, American companies have chosen to postpone strategic reorientation and adjustment. Simultaneously, trade barriers have steered developing nations into new avenues of competition and strengthened their emerging industries. Consequently, for US companies options such as moving up-scale appear to have passed. Maintenance of status quo firm and industry strategies have essentially welded the textile and apparel industries to regions where production has historically been concentrated. Changing trade regimes threaten to spur the ongoing process of globalization and heavily impact regions with large shares of these increasingly uncompetitive industries.

Issues and perspectives on evaluating manufacturing modernization programs

Abstract The establishment of a national system of federal-state manufacturing modernization centers to serve small- and medium-sized manufacturing systems is a major experiment in the US. The systems rapid expansion has made it impossible to begin with an experimental design that would systematically permit tests of the variables and relationships likely to effect the long-term economic effectiveness of these centers or their political and financial stability. Relatedly, many existing evaluation studies and journalistic narratives are marred by serious analytical and empirical flaws. It is not too late to attempt to improve practice in future evaluations. Several areas of expanded evaluation are described, including theories of industrial restructuring, regional technology infrastructure, public management, financing, evaluation design, evaluability assessment, firm learning, and measurement of benefits and costs. In each case, evaluation is presented as a means of simultaneously yielding information relevant to formative and summative program-level decisions and to hypothesis testing.

Overhauling and Revitalizing Federal Economic Development Programs

Although federal economic development has fallen on hard times in the past decade, it remains important, especially in rural areas. In addition, the federal government can play key regulatory roles. We review the still powerful case for place-based approaches but argue that a number of program and policy reforms are pressing. Programs should place greater emphasis on human capital than they have and should explore the potential for consumption base strategies. Incentive competition should be regulated nationally. Greater coordination of economic development strategies across federal agencies is badly needed, and Congress should explore blocking up federal funding regionally. Better targeting and performance standards should be implemented and changes in crude place-based eligibility explored. Finally, rigorous and relevant evaluation research should be methodically undertaken, the results disseminated, and programs subsequently redesigned. We believe that these reforms can revitalize the practice of federal economic development and invigorate political support for it.

Landscapes of Inequality: Spatial Segregation, Economic Isolation, and Contingent Residential Locations

Cities contain clusters of jobs and people. These clusters or groups lead to the formation of districts. In the case of firms, transactions costs and networks facilitate spatial concentration; in the case of people, chain migration and social networks reinforce group propinquity. Together, these clusters come to form the socioeconomic fabric of metropolitan areas. The end result is a city made up of labor markets and residential enclaves. This simplistic representation of urban form is at the heart of many efforts to model the residential or place-of-work location decision. Reflective of this verbal schematic of a city, the articles in this issue ask, each in their own way, two questions: do industrial and social groups overlap; and what factors, market and nonmarket, structure residential location options and therefore either facilitate or retard access to jobs by social groups? In these articles, immigrants and underrepresented minorities are the objects of investigation, and the metropolitan region, captured in multiple spatial scales, is the geographic unit of observation. The literature on immigrants’ propensity for employment suggests that the demand for low-wage labor, on the one hand, and ethnic networks, on the other hand, together help to explain the spatial location of ethnic employment concentrations. Similarly, a prominent explanation of the underemployment of underrepresented minorities emphasizes the discrepancy between residential location and the suburban location of work. At work are markets for housing and labor. At the scale of the city, this description of cause and effect is attractive and even compelling. But it ignores preexisting spatial segregation and residential discrimination that fix in space and reinforce patterns of spatial inequality that shape and reshape the location of residents and their access to work. At work is the unfolding process of uneven development, a persistent quality of capitalism that plays out across multiple spatial scales and effects differences in levels and rates of economic development across time among places, people, and broader economic activity. The articles in this issue consider, in different and novel ways, the residentiallocation decision of social groups and the corresponding links between the site of residence and the site of work, overlaid on longabiding problems of social and economic inequality that are defined by race, income, and uneven development (Fox Gotham 2002; Orfield and Lee 2005; Watson 2006). These location decisions are encumbered geographically by a segregated landscape that, once acknowledged, stands as a testaEditorial Landscapes of Inequality: Spatial Segregation, Economic Isolation, and Contingent Residential Locations