Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
regional settings, contingent path dependence and context specii c factors need to be
taken into account for each individual case. These results i t well in the current institu-
tional, relational and evolutionary paradigms of economic geography, which all empha-
size the role of path dependence and contingency (Martin and Sunley, 2006). They also
coni rm the main argument expressed by Martin and Sunley (2006, p. 414), namely that
'we need to understand regional “lock-in” as a multiscaled process, and one which also
has a high degree of place-dependence, rather than as a universal principle that applies
everywhere and anywhere and that is inexorable in its emergence and consequences'. In
order to forecast where lock-ins could block regional renewal in the future, it is thus of
utmost importance to go beyond the narrow spatial focus on the local and regional, from
which many studies of old industrial areas have been suf ering. The empirical part of this
chapter has shown that it is of key importance when analysing regional lock-ins in old
industrial areas to take the institutional context at all spatial levels, that is local, regional,
national, and supra-national into account.
This chapter has attempted to contribute to the key question of why it is that 'some
regional economies become locked into development paths that lose dynamism, whilst
other regional economies seem able to avoid this danger' (Martin and Sunley, 2006,
p. 395). More research is necessary to answer this question and a future research agenda
should, in my view, focus on several issues that could not be enough dealt with here.
First, not enough research has been done yet on the role of social capital and trust in
relation to regional lock-ins. They might potentially, for instance, be strong in regions
with high stocks of social capital and trust. Second, the issue of sunk costs (costs that are
irrevocably committed to a particular use, and therefore are not recoverable in case of
exit) should be more explored in relation to regional lock-ins (Melachroinos and Spence,
2001). Third, too little is known about the issues around related and unrelated variety
and path creation in relation to the above-mentioned key question (see also Martin and
Sunley, 2006). Fourth, further research is necessary regarding what triggers the transi-
tion from positive to negative lock-ins in regions. Last but not least, more work should
be done on regional policy concepts to avoid the emergence of lock-ins, such as the
learning region and learning cluster (Hassink, 2007a; OECD, 2001). Particularly the
paradigm of evolutionary economic geography of ers a wide variety of theoretical notes,
such as variety, selection environment, path dependence and lock-ins that are useful in
dealing with these issues and hence in coming closer to a satisfying answer to the above-
mentioned key question in economic geography.
Acknowledgements
This chapter presents the main results of a three-year comparative research project on
the impact of lock-ins on old industrial areas in Germany and South Korea, which
was sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council,
DFG) and the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) (see Grabher and
Hassink, 2004). An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Fourth European
Meeting on Applied Evolutionary Economics (EMAEE) Utrecht, The Netherlands, in
May 2005. I would like to thank the interviewees for spending their time with me, Ron
Boschma, Maureen McKelvey, Bjørnar Sæther, Oliver Ibert, Bjørn Terje Asheim and
Gernot Grabher and four anonymous reviewers for giving useful comments on (parts
of) earlier versions of this paper and Hubert Lehnard, Werner Schöttelndreyer, Heiner