Social Capital, Innovativeness, and the New Economic Geography

• This chapter discusses the relationship between, on the one hand, the knowledge economy’s social capital and innovativeness and, on the other hand, the new economic geography, which mainly is valid for the manufacturing economy. The discussion ends up in a proposition for a “new economic geography 2 model, " in which the knowledge producing sector and its relations to other sectors are modeled in a framework of two or more regions. The overarching mechanisms and results are similar in the two models: cumulative causation create and enhance regional disparities, but the processes are partly different. It may seem somewhat paradoxical that the industrial specialization, which is a result of the original new economic geography model, in the new model is replaced by “specialization in diversification, " but the knowledge economy’s specialization is “subtle” and diverse - and, as it seems, with subsectors related to and dependent on each other. This is all a reflection of the proposition that social capital and innovativeness play a much larger role for growth and development in the knowledge economy than they did in the manufacturing economy.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Ekonomisk geografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Economic Geography (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Cumulative causation

Diverse specialization

Economies of scale

Increasing returns

Innovativeness

Knowledge economy

Knowledge spillovers

New economic geography 2

Social capital

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kap (subject category)