Innovation and the states: the regional manifestations of the Endless Frontier in the US Rust Belt

Ben Armstrong and Dan Traficonte

Chapter 14 in Research Handbook on Regions and Transformative Innovation Policy, 2026, pp 231-243 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: After the Second World War, the United States established a range of innovation policies at the national level that would help change the structure of the American economy. However, regional efforts to establish innovation policy that transforms local economies have been far less successful. Since the 1980s, high-income regions in the United States have grown faster than low-income regions in what has become known as “the great divergence.” State and local governments in places falling behind economically have adopted a series of innovation policies to close the gap with growing regions. But studies of these policies have found them to be ineffective, partially due to political and policy incentives that clash at the national and regional levels. This chapter reviews the evolution of regional innovation policy in the United States, highlighting the dilemmas that have limited its effects and offering examples of alternative approaches to regional economic transformation.

Keywords: Regional political economy; Subnational innovation; Research policy; Regional economic development; Industrial policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035309924
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035309931.00024 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

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:elg:eechap:22217_14

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().