Innovation in Cities: Science-Based Diversity, Specialization and Localized Competition

David Audretsch and Maryann P Feldman

No 1980, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Whether diversity or specialization of economic activity better promotes technological change and subsequent economic growth has been the subject of a heated debate in the economics literature. The purpose of this paper is to consider the effect of the composition of economic activity on innovation. We test whether the specialization of economic activity within a narrow concentrated set of economic activities is more conducive to knowledge spillovers or if diversity, by bringing together complementary activities, better promotes innovation. The evidence provides considerable support for the diversity thesis but little support for the specialization thesis.

Keywords: Agglomeration; Economic Development; Geography; Growth; Innovation; Spillovers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O1 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=1980 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Innovation in cities:: Science-based diversity, specialization and localized competition (1999)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1980

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... ers/dp.php?dpno=1980

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().