Skip Navigation



Journal of Economic Geography Advance Access published online on June 13, 2007
Journal of Economic Geography, doi:10.1093/jeg/lbm018
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
7/5/635    most recent
lbm018v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Frenken, K.
Right arrow Articles by Boschma, R. A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

A theoretical framework for evolutionary economic geography: industrial dynamics and urban growth as a branching process

Koen Frenken* and Ron A. Boschma*

* Section of Economic Geography, Urban and Regional research centre Utrecht (URU), Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. email < K.Frenken{at}geo.uu.nl>

We propose a framework that specifies the process of economic development as an evolutionary branching process of product innovations. Each product innovation provides a growth opportunity for an existing firm or a new firm, and for an existing city or a new city. One can then obtain both firm size and city size distributions as two aggregates resulting from a single evolutionary process. Gains from variety at the firm level (economies of scope) and the urban level (Jacobs externalities) provide the central feedback mechanism in economic development generating strong path dependencies in the spatial concentration of industries and the specialization of cities. Gains from size are also expected, yet these are ultimately bounded by increasing wages. The contribution of our framework lies in providing a micro-foundation of economic geography in terms of the interplay between industrial dynamics and urban growth. The framework is sufficiently general to investigate systematically a number of stylized facts in economic geography, while at the same time it is sufficiently flexible to be extended such as to become applicable in more specific micro-contexts. A number of extensions related to the concepts of knowledge spillover and lock-in, are also discussed.

Keywords: evolutionary economic geography, urban growth, firm growth, Zipf, branching, innovation,
JEL classifications: B25, B52, L11, L25, R0, R1, R12
Date submitted: 16 November 2006     Date accepted: 12 March 2007


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 J ECON GEOGRHome page
J. Gluckler
Economic geography and the evolution of networks
J. Econ. Geogr., September 1, 2007; 7(5): 619 - 634.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 J ECON GEOGRHome page
G. Bottazzi, G. Dosi, G. Fagiolo, and A. Secchi
Modeling industrial evolution in geographical space
J. Econ. Geogr., September 1, 2007; 7(5): 651 - 672.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.