Michael Storper

The Resurgence of Regional Economies, Ten Years Later The Region as a Nexus of Untraded Interdependencies

Since the early 1980s, social scientists have increas ingly focused upon the significance of the region to the organization of economic life. This article considers three main lines of analysis which have emerged. These concentrate respectively on insti tutions, industrial organization and transactions, and technological change and learning. Each has made strong claims about the role of the region. I argue here, however, that none has yet developed a wholly convincing explanation for the resurgence of regional economies. To do this it is necessary to understand the region as a locus of untraded interdependencies. This has implications for how we think about regional and industrial policies. I illustrate these points with some remarks on regional policies in contemporary Europe.

The Limits to Globalization: Technology Districts and International Trade

AbstractThe proportion of traded goods in world output has been rising steadily over the past several decades. When we look at specific products exported by the advanced industrial nations, increasing export specialization is evident. Such specialization cannot be explained by conventional notions of comparative advantage, nor entirely by the new trade theory based on economies of scale. Rather, a significant proportion must be due to technological or “absolute” advantages on the part of the specialized exporter, and a significant dimension of technological advantage is product-based and renewed through learning, giving rise to dynamic economies of variety as a source of export specialization. Industries characterized by such product-based learning and absolute advantage tend to have important developmental effects on their host economies because they earn quasi-rents. Such industries also tend to be organized into production networks combining the advantages of specialization and flexibility, which are k...

Flexibility, hierarchy and regional development: The changing structure of industrial production systems and their forms of governance in the 1990s☆

Abstract This paper develops the concept of production system for understanding and comparing some of the success stories of regional development in recent years, and for comparing their developmental tendencies. The production system has an input-output structure (a set of units of production of different sizes linked together), a structure of governance (authority and power) and a territoriality (whether it is dispersed or territorially concentrated).

Regional ‘Worlds’ of Production: Learning and Innovation in the Technology Districts of France, Italy and the USA

The aim of this book is to present a much-needed conceptualization of ‘the learning region’. The editors scrutinize key concepts and issues surrounding this phenomenon, which are then discussed in the context of recent literature. This unique conceptualization of the learning region presents a state of the art exploration of theories. Leading scholars from across Europe, the USA and South Africa draw upon various disciplines to explain how regional actors perform regional learning.

The wealth of regions: Market forces and policy imperatives in local and global context

Abstract The article opens with an extended commentary on the continued—and future—significance of regional development issues, even in a rapidly globalizing world economy. The bases of regional economic activity are analysed in terms of network structures of production, technology systems, local labour markets, and regional business cultures. A policy framework for approaching tasks of regional competitiveness is described, with special reference to first mover advantages, resource mobilization, problems of regional coordination, and institution building in general. A brief case-study of some actual policy responses to the economic crisis of Southern California in the early 1990s is presented.

The Nature of Cities: The Scope and Limits of Urban Theory

There has been a growing debate in recent decades about the range and substance of urban theory. The debate has been marked by many different claims about the nature of cities, including declarations that the urban is an incoherent concept, that urban society is nothing less than modern society as a whole, that the urban scale can no longer be separated from the global scale, and that urban theory hitherto has been deeply vitiated by its almost exclusive concentration on the cities of the global North. This article offers some points of clarification of claims like these. All cities can be understood in terms of a theoretical framework that combines two main processes, namely, the dynamics of agglomeration/polarization, and the unfolding of an associated nexus of locations, land uses and human interactions. This same framework can be used to identify many different varieties of cities, and to distinguish intrinsically urban phenomena from the rest of social reality. The discussion thus identifies the common dimensions of all cities without, on the one hand, exaggerating the scope of urban theory, or on the other hand, asserting that every individual city is an irreducible special case.

The City as Studio; The World as Back Lot: The Impact of Vertical Disintegration on the Location of the Motion Picture Industry

Motion picture production is currently carried out by small firms under contract to an independent producer rather than in large integrated firms, the major studios. In this paper the emergence of this vertically disintegrated industry is traced and its impact on the location of the motion picture industry is analyzed. Vertical disintegration has led to a reagglomeration of motion picture employment and establishments in Los Angeles, despite the dispersal of film shooting throughout the world. The processes that are shaping the present-day organization of motion pictures can be observed across a range of industries. An examination of these processes in motion pictures suggests that their association with reagglomeration in urban centers could have an important impact on patterns of urbanization.

Better rules or stronger communities? On the social foundations of institutional change and its economic effects

Abstract Much of the literature on the impact of institutions on economic development has focused on the tradeoffs between society and community as mutually opposed forms of institutional coordination. On the one hand, sociologists, geographers, and some economists have stressed the positive economic externalities that are associated with the development of associational or group life. Most economists, in contrast, hold that the development of communities may be a second-best solution to the development of formal institutions or even have negative effects, such as the promotion of rent-seeking behavior and principal-agent problems. Societal institutions—such as clear, transparent rules and enforcement mechanisms—are held to be universally positive for development. But there are no real-world cases in which only one of the two exists;society and community are always and everywhere in interaction. This interaction, however, has attracted little attention. In this article, society and community are conceived of as complementary forms of organization whose relative balance and interaction shape the economic potential of every territory. Changes in the balance between community and society take place constantly and affect the medium- and long-run development prospects of every territory. The depth and the speed of change depend on a series of factors, such as starting points in the interaction of society and community, the sources and dynamics of change, and the conflict-solving capacities of the preexisting situation.

The increasing importance of geographical proximity in knowledge production: an analysis of US patent citations, 1975 – 1997

Much literature suggests that knowledge-production activities are still heavily dependent upon geographically proximate sources of information, in spite of rapid development in telecommunications technology. Some analysts believe that the importance of proximity in knowledge production will eventually disappear with the continued development of telecommunications. The authors analyse patent citations and find that, after controlling for the existing distribution of knowledge-production activities, the proportion of local citations has increased over time. This finding reinforces the notion that in contemporary knowledge production and innovation the role for geographical proximity is increasing.

Cohesion Policy in the European Union: Growth, Geography, Institutions

Since the reform of the Structural Funds in 1989, the EU has made the principle of cohesion one of its key policies. Much of the language of European cohesion policy eschews the idea of tradeoffs between efficiency and equity, suggesting it is possible to maximise overall growth whilst also achieving continuous convergence in outcomes and productivity across Europe’s regions. Yet, given the rise in inter-regional disparities, it is unclear that cohesion policy has altered the pathway of development from what would have occurred in the absence of intervention. This paper draws on geographical economics, institutionalist social science, and endogenous growth theory, with the aim of providing a fresh look at cohesion policy. By highlighting a complex set of potential tradeoffs and inter-relations – overall growth and efficiency; inter-territorial equity; territorial democracy and governance capacities; and social equity within places – it revisits the rationale of cohesion policy, with particular attention to the geographical dynamics of economic development.