To them that hath: economic complexity and local industrial strategy in the UK

Penny Mealy () and Diane Coyle
Additional contact information
Penny Mealy: University of Cambridge

International Tax and Public Finance, 2022, vol. 29, issue 2, No 4, 358-377

Abstract: Abstract Divergent economic performance in many countries has led to renewed interest in place-based policies, such as the UK’s local industrial strategies at the level of Combined Authorities or Local Economic Partnerships. However, an analysis of employment data using methods from the economic complexity literature demonstrates great heterogeneity in industrial strengths and future growth opportunities within those jurisdictions, raising challenges in designing common policies suited to all sub-geographies. Moreover, the ‘related’ industries into which low-complexity, low-wage local authorities could potentially diversify are also low-wage. Incremental policies building on existing local capacities are therefore likely to amplify divergence between prospering and left-behind areas.

Keywords: Economic complexity; Relatedness; Regional economic development; Industrial strategy; Place-based policy; O25; R10; R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10797-021-09667-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:kap:itaxpf:v:29:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s10797-021-09667-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/10797/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10797-021-09667-0

Access Statistics for this article

International Tax and Public Finance is currently edited by Ronald B. Davies and Kimberly Scharf

More articles in International Tax and Public Finance from Springer, International Institute of Public Finance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().