Proximities and the emergence of regional industry: evidence of the liability of smallness in Malta

Sakura Yamamura and Paul Lassalle

European Planning Studies, 2020, vol. 28, issue 2, 380-399

Abstract: The interplays of different types of proximities are crucial to the emergence of new industries, including entrepreneurial ecosystems as pillar of the competitive advantage in regions. Though proximities can be advantageous, negative aspects on the economic development have also been discussed, leading to the discussion of the so-called proximity paradox. To better understand the effective functioning of these proximities, it must be concretized which institutional actors play a role, and how their collaboration and thus their proximity constellations contribute to the regional development. Based on empirical evidence of Malta, this paper operationalizes the different proximities types and conceptually investigates the different proximities between institutional actors in building a new regional industry, i.e. the gaming industry. The case of the Maltese gaming industry illustrates how regions with limited size and resource-scarcity, thus high proximities between actors (also prevalent in city-states and peripheral regions), can still defy the odds of the liability of smallness and, thus the proximity paradox. Results of this in-depth study shows how collaborative endeavour of proximate institutional actors can contribute to developing an effective entrepreneurial environment and the emergence of a new regional industry.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09654313.2019.1668915 (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:taf:eurpls:v:28:y:2020:i:2:p:380-399

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CEPS20

DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2019.1668915

Access Statistics for this article

European Planning Studies is currently edited by Philip Cooke and Louis Albrechts

More articles in European Planning Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().