Knowledge Externalities, Innovation Clusters and Regional Development

The concept of knowledge spillovers is used within the book to explain a number of major economic phenomena, including the geographical clustering of inventions; the social returns to R&D that significantly exceed private returns; and the sizeable disproportions that exist between firms in terms of their R&D inputs and outputs. The contributors identify that small firms are responsible for far more product innovations than large firms relative to their measurable knowledge resources. The book also stresses the importance of a catch-up mechanism that sees technological improvement as the combination of two distinct types of activity: innovation and imitation. In this way, the impact of human capital and other types of knowledge acquisition on economic growth is measured. The conclusions of the contributors are invaluably oriented to policy implications. This book will appeal to researchers and postgraduate students of regional science and innovation and knowledge, as well as policymakers.