Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
our analysis of the evolution of an economic landscape should look at both types of
change and should not always assume that selection is operative. As yet, we do not know
enough about the prevalence and integration of these two types of change, or how we
can establish their relative importance in specii c cases of regional and local economic
evolution.
Complexity economics has undoubtedly proved a fruitful source of ideas, but to what
extent does it also provide the basis of a coherent ontological conception of regional eco-
nomic evolution that could be developed by economic geographers? Such a theory would
have to be based on the premise that regional economic evolution is driven by advances
in knowledge and that knowledge consists of rules or connections between ideas. The
geography of knowledge is crucial to understanding the rate of macroeconomic growth
as economic changes are the outcome of the relative balance between forces producing
innovation, new knowledge and new variety, and forces leading to the disappearance of
this variety through selection and the ageing of knowledge (Ramlogan and Metcalfe,
2006). This process is uneven across sectors and spaces:
Growth does not occur without the continual emergence of innovation and the persistent
changes in the relative importance of products, methods of production, i rms, industries,
regions and whole economies, that adaptation to innovation implies, and these changes in
structure are a consequence and a cause of the growth of knowledge. (Ramlogan and Metcalfe,
2006, p. 133)
Dopfer and Potts (2004a) argue for a form of evolutionary realism that explains knowl-
edge as evolutionary dynamics among systems of generic economic rules. The
micro
level of analysis refers to individuals' carrying of rules and actualisation of these rules,
while the
macro
level is the population or deep structure of meso-rules that dei nes how
rules coordinate with each other and i t together (Dopfer et al., 2004). At the
meso
level
generic rules undergo phases of origination, dif usion and adaptation, and retention and
replication.
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The emergence of a new rule disrupts the coordinated structure and pro-
duces a period of de-coordination in actualizations. As the new rule moves through dif-
fusion and retention phases, re-coordination occurs as a new division of labour, possibly
involving regional and industrial organization, stabilises. Dopfer et al. (2004) argue that
rules and their actualisations form 'meso units' that are the dynamical building blocks of
an economic system:
Work on industrial districts, regional knowledge clusters, learning regions, inter-i rm organi-
sation, national innovation systems, networks with weak or strong ties, or technical support
communities all falls under the heading of meso economics from the evolutionary perspective.
(Dopfer et al., p. 268)
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In this view an analysis of regional economic change depends on understanding how
generic rules, which are composed of knowledge connections, emerge and are actualised
and institutionalised in particular regions. While this view has considerable potential,
the precise meaning and content of such rules seems to require much further clarii cation
and illustration.
This emerging theoretical approach certainly has important implications for economic
geography. First, it implies that there are strong reasons to re-examine and further
