The Technology Gap and European Regional Growth Dynamics

Lydia Greunz
Additional contact information
Lydia Greunz: Free University of Brussels

Chapter 8 in European Regional Growth, 2003, pp 241-265 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract During recent decades, the process of convergence among European regions has slowed down considerably and according to a widening group of economists (Fagerberg and Verspagen 1996; Tondl 1997; Beine and Philippe 2000) it even ceased after 1980. However, important growth differentials still characterize the European landscape. This fact implies that some major assumptions underlying the neoclassical view of regional economic growth, such as constant returns to scale, perfect mobility of factors and immediate diffusion of knowledge may fail to match reality. At the other extreme, perfect immobility of knowledge as advocated by the circular and cumulative causation assumption (Myrdal 1957; Kaldor 1966), where regions build up their own technological capabilities and move along their own balanced growth path, can not reasonably be defended when one looks at the growing evidence for geographically and technologically mediated spillovers (Jaffe et al. 1993; Jaffe and Trajtenberg 1996; Maurseth and Verspagen 1999; Varga 1998; Caniëls 2000).

Keywords: Productivity Growth; European Region; Knowledge Spillover; Innovative Activity; Patent Citation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:adspcp:978-3-662-07136-6_9

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783662071366

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-07136-6_9

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Advances in Spatial Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().