Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

A Life Cycle for Clusters?Stability and change: Driving cluster development

A Life Cycle for Clusters?: Stability and change: Driving cluster development 1.3 Course of the study 21 2 Stability and change: Driving cluster development As has been advocated elsewhere, a full ‘theory’ of the cluster would have to pro- vide an answer to the questions of ‘what, how, why as well as when, where and who’. Its main focus, however, should lie in identifying the causalities, i.e. in ad- dressing the ‘why’ question (Maskell and Kebir 2004). In the context of clusters, this comprises three aspects: ‘Why’ do they emerge, endure for a time and why do they become exhausted? The existing literature investigating the drivers of cluster development finds them in the duality of stability and change in the spatial distri- bution of industries. Clusters emerge due to a series of events that leads to an ini- tial concentration of firms in an area. Their endurance is then attributable to the stabilising effect of positive and negative agglomeration externalities (Richardson 1993). As a result, the local firm population grows up to a threshold level often re- ferred to as the area’s ‘carrying capacity’. The exhaustion of the cluster is then brought about by changes in the effect of agglomeration externalities (usually by altering model parameters). The outcome of this http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Life Cycle for Clusters?Stability and change: Driving cluster development

Part of the Contributions to Economics Book Series
A Life Cycle for Clusters? — Jan 1, 2006
Download PDF
15 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/a-life-cycle-for-clusters-stability-and-change-driving-cluster-o82N3VqodH
Publisher
Physica-Verlag HD
Copyright
© Physica-Verlag Heidelberg 2006
ISBN
978-3-7908-1710-2
Pages
21 –36
DOI
10.1007/3-7908-1763-5_2
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

1.3 Course of the study 21 2 Stability and change: Driving cluster development As has been advocated elsewhere, a full ‘theory’ of the cluster would have to pro- vide an answer to the questions of ‘what, how, why as well as when, where and who’. Its main focus, however, should lie in identifying the causalities, i.e. in ad- dressing the ‘why’ question (Maskell and Kebir 2004). In the context of clusters, this comprises three aspects: ‘Why’ do they emerge, endure for a time and why do they become exhausted? The existing literature investigating the drivers of cluster development finds them in the duality of stability and change in the spatial distri- bution of industries. Clusters emerge due to a series of events that leads to an ini- tial concentration of firms in an area. Their endurance is then attributable to the stabilising effect of positive and negative agglomeration externalities (Richardson 1993). As a result, the local firm population grows up to a threshold level often re- ferred to as the area’s ‘carrying capacity’. The exhaustion of the cluster is then brought about by changes in the effect of agglomeration externalities (usually by altering model parameters). The outcome of this

Published: Jan 1, 2006

Keywords: Trade Cost; Location Choice; Agglomeration Economy; Cluster Development; Congestion Cost

There are no references for this article.