firm strategies and path dependencies an emerging economic geography of industrial data this paper analyses how firms engaged in industrial data production in the power generation industry operating within the us energy sector produce collect store aggregate analyse and ultimatel

one size fits all towards a differentiated regional innovation policy approach innovation has moved to the foreground in regional policy in the last decade concrete policies were shaped by best practice models derived from high tech areas and well performing regions these are often applied in a similar way across many types of regions here an attempt is made to show that there is no ideal model for innovation policy as innovation activities differ strongly between central peripheral and old industrial areas in this paper we analyse different types of regions with respect to their preconditions for innovation networking and innovation barriers based on this classification different policy options and strategies are developed

assessing the regional economic impacts of renewable energy sources a literature review abstract the transition of the global energy system is one of the main trends that offers opportunities as well as challenges for the economy most literature evaluates the impact of that transition at a national level that view is broadened towards a regional scale due to the lower energy density of many renewable energy sources renewable energy generation will be more decentralised leading to potentially significant changes in the regional economy when transitioning to a renewable energy system in this paper the current literature and methods of assessing regional economic impacts of a transition to renewable energy generation is reviewed the findings suggest an overall need to clearly define the topics such as technologies that are assessed and the evaluated time period a guideline for a regional impact assessment is provided focusing on the suitability of applied impact assessment methods employment ratios supply chain analyses input output models and computable general equilibrium models

who works in a working region inclusive innovation in the new manufacturing economy abstractwho works in a working region inclusive innovation in the new manufacturing economy regional studies scholars have documented economic gains for regions that promote manufacturing through co location of innovation and production activities but it is unclear whether the production jobs created in this new context remain inclusive of workers with limited formal education this paper compares us states that specialize in biopharmaceuticals to understand who participates in a so called working region while some state policy makers have privileged scientific and design occupations at the expense of the production workforce regional actors in north carolina have increased employment in design and development while growing their biopharmaceutical production base aligning innovation and equity goals in the process

the limits of capital transcending the public financer private producer split in industrial r d abstract a near consensus has emerged supporting the public funding of industrial r d as a solution to a host of market failures however the common policy prescription urges government to go no further than minimal market enhancing intervention largely keeping the state to the role of financer of privately conducted r d by focusing on three general issues in the context of industrial r d trust coordination and motivation this article develops an argument for a more expansive government role two models of state intervention are at the center of the analysis public production of r d and state sponsorship of inter firm and inter organizational networks it is argued that both these models have distinct advantages as well as weaknesses in addressing common challenges to industrial r d production informed by the positive experiences of different states that have moved in recent years from high technology industries periphery to the center this article explains how the two models of state intervention address the various problems associated with pure private production it is concluded that while even advanced countries with well developed markets might find it advantageous to actively intervene in industrial r d the two models should especially be considered in cases of economies that suffer from weak market signals low retention of value added functions limited professional capacities and limited institutional thickness and networks

oligopoly and the polarization of space one remarkable fact in economic geography is that production does not appear everywhere at the same time instead it occurs at a few points with variable intensity more precisely once the spatial distribution of consumption and the transportation infrastructures are given firms seem to be inexorably attracted by some particular places in economic space this results in a distribution of production characterized by a high degree of geographical polarization location theory has provided various explanations of this phenomenon see e g the surveys of fujita 1990 and stahl 1987 they often rely upon the existence of pecuniary externalities of different sorts the purpose of this note is to review some recent contributions that have shed new light on the role of more traditional factors in the agglomeration of industrial or retailing firms more precisely i want to discuss i the impact of the channelization of space created by transportation infrastructures and ii the main forces leading to geographical de concentration in the process of spatial competition in order to account for the polarization of space one must first recognize that increasing returns are essential for explaining the geographical distribution of production activities with nonincreasing returns and a uniform distribution of natural resources it would be desirable for every firm to disperse its activities among the consumption places at each of them a firm s plant would be set up in order to meet the local demand the transportation costs would then be saved and each consumption place would become an autarky put in a different way the distribution of production would mirror exactly the distribution of consumption unless the natural resources are unevenly distributed across locations while indisputably pertinent unequal distribution of resources seems weak as the main explanation for geographical polarization assume that increasing returns are now introduced into the picture their existence makes it profitable for the firms to concentrate their production in

how to institutionalize innovative clusters comparing explicit top down and implicit bottom up approaches abstract the cluster concept has become a popular guideline for regional policies fostering industrial competitiveness and innovativeness based on sectoral specialization and collaboration this article discusses the issue of effective institutional forms of cluster promotion juxtaposing two modes explicit cluster policies implemented top down by regional authorities and implicit initiatives that are organized and financed bottom up by groups of firms both approaches are compared from a theoretical and empirical perspective pointing out differing patterns of effects relative strengths and weaknesses realization of these differences considered in relation to regional preconditions and objectives may help to adequately institutionalize cluster support

gas electricity coordination in competitive markets under renewable energy uncertainty as climate concerns low natural gas prices and renewable technologies increase the electric power sector s dependence on natural gas fired power plants operational and investment models for gas and electric power systems will need to incorporate the interdependencies between these two systems to accurately capture the impacts of one on the other currently few hybrid gas electricity models exist this paper reviews the state of the art for hybrid gas electricity models and presents a new model and case study to illustrate a few potential coupling effects between gas and electric power systems specifically the proposed model analyzes the optimal operation of gas fired power plants in a competitive electricity market taking into consideration gas purchases gas capacity contracting and residual demand uncertainty for the generation company due to renewable energy sources

industrial complexes in mexico implications for regional industrial policy based on related variety and smart specialization abstractindustrial complexes in mexico implications for regional industrial policy based on related variety and smart specialization regional studies the goal of this paper is to identify and analyze the location of industrial complexes in mexico with the purpose of providing an analytical foundation for the construction of regionally based industrial policies based on the principles of related variety and smart specialization that complement current national level policy efforts to promote investment and stabilize the real exchange rate the results of this analysis highlight distinct complexes located in particular portions of the country the location of these complexes points to several regional policy options that will better address regional heterogeneities in the distribution of industry employment as well as regional differences in workforce competencies infrastructure quality and extra regional linkages than have national level industrial policies

pricing flexible natural gas supply contracts under uncertainty in hydrothermal markets the worldwide development of the natural gas industry resulted in an integration process between electrical and gas sectors in several countries in brazil this process has been taking place in a consistent manner especially on account of the increase in gas consumption for industrial use and of the installation of thermoelectric plants due to the predominance of hydro plants in electric power generation thermoelectric energy production is basically dependent on hydrology and as a result presents a wide annual variability consequently the investment applied to gas production and transportation infrastructure may become under utilized during a large part of the time thus it is important to find mechanisms apt to improve its utilization in this respect the present work investigates the creation of a flexible market for gas where contracts for flexible gas supply would be offered to industrial users who would receive the gas assigned to thermal power plants when the latter are not dispatched and would resort to an alternate fuel when these plants are dispatched the attractiveness of such a contract would depend of course on its price the purpose of this work is to develop a stochastic model for pricing flexible gas supply contracts taking into account the uncertainty associated to the supply dependent on the dispatch of the thermal power plants which have the priority of use of the gas and the risk profile of potential consumers

competitiveness of regions from an evolutionary perspective boschma r a 2004 competitiveness of regions from an evolutionary perspective regional studies38 993 1006 do regions compete as firms do how does one deal with the fact that regions unlike organizations are entities that do not act does it make sense to talk about the ability of regions to generate new variety this paper aims to address these questions from an evolutionary perspective it is meaningful to talk about regional competitiveness when the region affects the performances of local firms to a considerable degree this is especially true when the competitiveness of a region depends on intangible non tradable assets based on a knowledge and competence base embedded in a particular institutional setting that are reproduced and modified through the actions and repeated interactions of actors although regions are increasingly becoming collective players actively responding to an increasing exposure to extra regional competition the paper explains why there are serious limits in enhancin

a mixed complementarity based equilibrium model of natural gas markets we present a new multiseasonal multiyear natural gas market equilibrium model based on the concept of a competitive equilibrium involving the market participants producers storage reservoir operators peak gas operators pipeline operators marketers and consumers the first three classes are depicted as price takers consistent with perfect competition the pipeline operations are described with regulated tariffs but also involve congestion pricing as a mechanism to allocate scarce pipeline capacity the marketers are price takers in all markets except in sales to consumers in which they compete as nash cournot players finally consumers are described by demand curves for each of the four sectors residential commercial industrial and electric power we show that the equilibrium model is an instance of a mixed nonlinear complementarity problem ncp and provide sufficient detail not generally seen in previous complementarity models of natural gas the ncp formulation is derived from considering the karush kuhn tucker optimality conditions of the optimization problems faced by these participants under mild conditions we show that this ncp has a solution and under additional reasonable conditions we show that the market prices are unique we also validate the model on a representative sample network with nine market participants and three seasons using four scenarios

multilevel innovation policy mix a closer look at state policies that augment the federal sbir program this paper examines nested multilevel innovation policies paying particular attention to u s federal and state small business innovation research programs with 45 states offering a range of sbir outreach and sbir match programs specifically designed to enhance the federal sbir program such programs provide a useful lens for examining the nature of the multilevel innovation policy mix the contributions of this article are twofold first the article provides theoretical motivation for multilevel innovation policy responses placing emphasis on positive policy responses in which state policies enhance federal policies second the article provides an empirical analysis examining the multilevel factors associated with a state government response that augments the federal sbir program the results from this analysis indicate these state policy actions are associated with a confluence of multilevel factors driven not only from top to down federal actions but also from bottom to up internal state political and economic factors as well as from lateral pressures from peer states

knowledge in cities this study identifies clusters of us and canadian metropolitan areas with similar knowledge traits these groups ranging from making regions characterised by knowledge about manufacturing to thinking regions noted for knowledge about the arts humanities it and commerce can be used by analysts and policy makers for the purposes of regional benchmarking or comparing the types of programme and infrastructure available to support closely related economic activities in addition these knowledge based clusters help to explain the types of region that have levels of economic development that exceed or fall short of other places with similar amounts of college attainment regression results show that engineering building enterprising and making regions are associated with higher levels of productivity and or income per capita while teaching understanding working and comforting regions have lower levels of economic development

innovation networks and vertical integration abstract a central debate in industrial policy today is that between proponents of large vertically integrated firms on the one hand and those of networks of small specialized producers on the other this paper argues that neither institutional structure is the panacea its supporters claim the menu of institutional alternatives is in fact quite large and both firms and networks of which there are several kinds can be successful growth promoting adaptations to the competitive environment industrial structures vary in their ability to coordinate information flows necessary for innovation and to overcome power relationships adverse to innovation the relative desirability of the various structures then depends on the nature and scope of technological change in the industry and on the effects of various product life cycle patterns the principal policy conclusion of this analysis is that the government s role ought to be facilitating rather than narrow and prescriptive allowing scope for firms to develop organizational forms that are best adapted to their particular environments

path renewal in old industrial regions possibilities and limitations for regional innovation policy coenen l moodysson j and martin h path renewal in old industrial regions possibilities and limitations for regional innovation policy regional studies this paper analyses the potential barriers and limitations for regional innovation policy to facilitate industrial renewal in old industrial regions it draws on a case analysis of the policy programme biorefinery of the future geared to promote renewal of the forest industry in northern sweden it is shown that infusion of radical emergent technology is necessary for new regional path development but not sufficient to avoid a singular focus on technology push policy should pay more attention to complementary experimentation processes in relation to demand side characteristics firm strategies and business models as well as regulatory aspects moreover coordination between regional innovation policy and adjacent domains and levels of policy making is needed as some of the most pressing obstacles for renewal are not specific to the region but i

impact on firms of the use of knowledge external sources a systematic review of the literature this study summarizes the main conclusions from a systematic review of the empirical literature regarding the impact on firms of the use of knowledge external sources universities research institutes and knowledge intensive business services with the aim to organize the literature we classify the different works according to the research question addressed i which firms use knowledge external sources ii do firms using knowledge external sources achieve better results and iii which firms benefit the most from using knowledge external sources stylized facts are that larger more r d intensive and high tech firms are more likely to use knowledge external sources and that use of knowledge external sources is associated to firms higher technical results less attention has been paid to the third question and evidence is not conclusive several recommendations for future research emerge first to take in greater consideration methodological issues so that potential biases in the results caused by sample selection and endogeneity are handled properly second to pay more attention to heterogeneous outcomes third to use continuous indicators of depth and breadth of links allowing for non linear relationships and fourth to extend evidence for developing countries and service industries

monopolistic competition and urban systems one of the most notable phenomena in the recent world economy is that it is becoming increasingly borderless for example the twelve countries of the ec are supposed to complete the formation of an integrated economic region by the end of 1992 in which there would be no restriction on movements of goods capital and people given such a plan of economic integration an obvious question of interest is what will be the new economic geography of the ec more concretely what will happen to the present major cities such as london paris rome and frankfurt where will the new dominant financial center or centers be where will the new core or cores be what will happen to the present peripheral regions in investigating such questions concerning the long run spatial impact of an economic integration first note that in a modern industrialized economy most economic activities are agglomerated in cities furthermore cities are different from each other not only m sizes but also in their functions in an economy typically cities together constitute some form of hierarchical system thus when we ask what the future economic geography of the ec will be like we are asking in essence what new hierarchical system of cities will emerge in the integrated ec what we need then is an economic theory which can explain the formation and change of hlerarchical city system in an economy unfortunately however it seems that no microeconomic model yet exists which can generate a hierarchical system of cities in a general equilibrium context of a national or international economy although a countless number of articles has been published on central place theory since the pioneering work by christaller 1933 no formal microeconomic model of central place theory seems to have been developed yet

strategic management of multi year natural gas contracts in electricity markets combined cycle gas turbine ccgt plants show some advantages such as better economies of scale or lower co2 emission rates in comparison to other technologies in addition due to their flexible operation ccgt plants are a useful support for the integration of the growing renewable energy installed capacity consequently during the last years ccgt plants have proliferated in electricity systems increasing the global demand of natural gas ng in order to guarantee the ng supply and to hedge the price volatility electricity generation companies gencos sign supply contracts with ng producers typically ng producers force long term contracts in order to recover their huge capital investments therefore gencos should optimize the exercise of the supply contracts in the long term scope in order to maximize their profits in the electricity market however the optimal exercise of the supply contracts on behalf of the gencos could be impeded because of possible bottlenecks in the ng system accordingly this paper proposes a methodology to incorporate both the characteristics of ng supply contracts and the congestions in the ng system in an electricity market model that could support the decision making process on behalf of the gencos a study case illustrates the methodology

the spatial evolution of the british automobile industry does location matter this article aims to describe and explain the spatial evolution of the automobile sector in great britain from an evolutionary perspective this analysis is based on a unique database of all entries and exits in this sector during the period 1895 1968 collected by the authors cox regressions show that spinoff dynamics agglomeration economies and time of entry have had a significant effect on the survival rate of automobile firms during the period 1895 1968

local market size social capital and outsourcing evidence from emilia romagna based on a unique dataset concerning small firms operating in the machinery and equipment industry in emilia romagna italy we estimate the separate effects of social capital and local market size on the probability to either fully or partially outsource parts of the production process we are able to distinguish 29 different phases of the production cycle from design to early processing to post production our estimates show that 1 social capital influences the full outsourcing of core assembly and post assembly activities while local market size affects the full outsourcing of early processing activities 2 neither social capital nor local market size have a statistically significant effect on the probability of partially outsourcing any step of the production process robustness tests confirm our results vis a vis the endogeneity of the local market size and social capital and the potential modifiable area unit problem relating to local market size

disagreements spinoffs and the evolution of detroit as the capital of the u s automobile industry the agglomeration of the automobile industry around detroit michigan is explained using a theory in which disagreements lead employees of incumbent firms to found spinoffs in the same industry predictions of the theory concerning entry and firm survival are tested using data on the origin location and years of production of every entrant into the industry from 1895 to 1966 the geographic concentration of the industry is attributed to four early successful entrants and the many successful spinoffs they spawned in the detroit area and not to conventional agglomeration economies benefiting co located firms as featured in modern theories of agglomeration implications of the findings regarding firm strategy are discussed

the rise of clusters of innovative industries in belgium during the industrial epoch abstract this article presents the notion of cluster of innovative industries in order to analyse long term techno industrial change in belgium this notion accounts for strong and dynamic techno economic linkages interdependencies and complementarities that may occur between a set of industries for a particular period of time each cluster has its roots in a set of closely related major innovations that link particular industries to each other through a dynamic process of transfer and feedback of technology via various mechanisms we identified a number of 12 clusters of innovative industries that have emerged in the leading industrial countries since the first industrial revolution we also present empirical outcomes concerning the extent to which belgium participated in these clusters during the industrial epoch the belgian case shows that lagging countries are incapable of developing fully these clusters major components of the clusters were either missing or underdeveloped or they emerged with a considerable delay due to first mover advantages among other reasons

electricity and natural gas interdependency comparison of two methodologies for coupling large market models within the european regulatory framework power generation growth based on natural gas fired power plants ngfpps has lead to increasing interactions between electric power and natural gas industries more companies are progressively and simultaneously participating as big players in both markets however each company has traditionally been settled in one side holding a particular competitive advantage electric power generation companies mainly know how to operate their generation assets whereas gas companies mainly know how to manage their gas supply contracts and make use of often regulated gas assets multi product energy companies have even created independent departments which decisions are usually taken uncoordinatedly in any case companies or departments usually support their decision making process in mathematical tools which represent each market with detail this paper presents two methodologies for coupling two interdependent electricity and gas market models formulated as optimization problems each methodology fulfills different department wishes the electricity perspective methodology maximizes electricity market profits after calculating equivalent gas contracts with the gas market model in contrast the gas perspective methodology minimizes gas operation costs after obtaining the relationship between the marginal revenue and the gas consumption with the electricity market model this coordinated solution would allow companies to obtain synergies resulting in a competitive advantage over other companies that operate uncoordinatedly in both markets

technology intensity and agglomeration economies abstract this article investigates the relationship between industry technology intensity and the impacts of agglomeration economies on industrial growth many recent studies suggest the actual economic impacts of different forms of agglomeration economies depend on industrial characteristics such as technology intensity but systematic empirical evidence is still lacking to fill this gap we analyze employment data covering all 3 digit naics industries of u s counties the results confirm that technology intensive industries are more likely to benefit from jacobs spillovers as measured by related variety while sectors with low technology intensities can better benefit from mar spillovers as measured by regional specialization

innovation in space the mosaic of regional innovation patterns this article casts light on the increasingly complex geography of innovation and knowledge sourcing activities we argue that the spatial patterns of learning and knowledge exchange vary substantially across different types of regions and industries the article elucidates such variations by combining three analytical approaches namely i modes of innovation differentiating between science technology innovation sti and doing using interacting dui modes ii regional innovation systems distinguishing between organizationally thick and diversified thick and specialized and thin systems and iii types of knowledge linkages that connect actors during the innovation process we explore in detail the key characteristics of the spatial architectures of innovation and knowledge flows in sti and dui industries located in regional innovation systems with varying degrees of organizational thickness and specialization we also discuss empirical examples documented in the extant literature to illustrate our arguments on how innovation and knowledge circulation unfold in space in various territorial and industrial contexts

coordination between medium term generation planning and short term operation in electricity markets this paper analyzes the coordination between medium term generation planning and short term operation in electricity markets this coordination is particularly important from a practical point of view in order to guarantee that certain aspects of the operation that arise in the medium term level are explicitly taken into account limited energy resources and obligatory use resources three different approaches are proposed in order to guarantee that short term decisions made by a generation company are consistent with its operation objectives formulated from a medium term perspective these approaches make use of technical and economic signals to coordinate both time scopes primal information dual information and resource valuation functions this paper presents the main advantages and drawbacks of the three approaches and applies them to a case study that uses a conjectural variation based representation of the market

optimizing short term natural gas supply portfolio for electric utility companies natural gas fired power plants ngfpp are important electricity generation resources in the united states optimizing the natural gas supply portfolio especially the short term portfolio is critical for the day to day operations and the financial performance of ngfpps traditionally such optimization problems are solved using cost minimization based frameworks however such frameworks are facing challenges due to the lack of consideration of associated financial risks in the current deregulated electricity markets which the electric utility companies eucs who own and operate ngfpps now bear this paper presents a utility maximization based framework to optimize the short term natural gas supply portfolio for the euc it considers the financial risks associated with the portfolio and incorporates the risk preferences of the eucs as decision maker dm in the portfolio optimization process an application of the proposed framework is provided and its results show that the proposed framework is more desirable in terms of risk cost trade off optimization

sectoral systems of innovation and production the concept sectoral system of innovation and production provides a multidimensional integrated and dynamic view of sectors it is proposed that a sectoral system is a set of products and the set of agents carrying out market and non market interactions for the creation production and sale of those products a sectoral systems has a specific knowledge base technologies inputs and demand agents are individuals and organizations at various levels of aggregation they interact through processes of communication exchange co operation competition and command and these interactions are shaped by institutions a sectoral system undergoes change and transformation through the co evolution of its various elements 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the dynamics of innovation from national systems and mode 2 to a triple helix of university industry government relations abstract the triple helix of university industry government relations is compared with alternative models for explaining the current research system in its social contexts communications and negotiations between institutional partners generate an overlay that increasingly reorganizes the underlying arrangements the institutional layer can be considered as the retention mechanism of a developing system for example the national organization of the system of innovation has historically been important in determining competition reorganizations across industrial sectors and nation states however are induced by new technologies biotechnology ict the consequent transformations can be analyzed in terms of neo evolutionary mechanisms university research may function increasingly as a locus in the laboratory of such knowledge intensive network transitions

the slow pace of rapid technological change gradualism and punctuation in technological change discussions of technological change have offered sharply contrasting perspectives of technological change as gradual or incremental and the image of technological change as being rapid even discontinuous these alternative perspectives are bridged using the punctuated equilibrium framework of evolutionary biology using this framework it is argued that the critical event is not a transformation of the technology but speciation the application of existing technology to a new domain of application as a result of the distinct selection criteria and the degree of resource abundance in the new domain a new technological form may emerge the new technological form may be able to penetrate other niches and in particular may precipitate a process of creative destruction and out compete prior technologies this framework is applied to an historical study of wireless communication from the early experimental efforts of hertz to the modern development of wireless telephony

linear complementarity models of nash cournot competition in bilateral and poolco power markets two cournot models of imperfect competition among electricity producers are formulated as mixed linear complementarity problems lcps and a simple example is presented to illustrate their application the two models simulate bilateral markets the models include a congestion pricing scheme for transmission but other transmission pricing approaches can also be represented in this framework the two models differ from each other in that one has no arbitrage between nodes of the network while in the other model arbitragers erase any noncost based differences in price the latter bilateral model turns out to be equivalent to a cournot model of a poolco the models differ from other cournot market models in that they include both of kirchhoff s laws via a dc approximation can include arbitragers possess unique solutions and are readily solved by efficient lcp algorithms the key assumption that permits their formulation as lcps is that each producer naively assumes that its output will not affect transmission prices

constructing regional advantage platform policies based on related variety and differentiated knowledge bases asheim b t boschma r and cooke p constructing regional advantage platform policies based on related variety and differentiated knowledge bases regional studies this paper presents a regional innovation policy model based on the idea of constructing regional advantage this policy model brings together concepts like related variety knowledge bases and policy platforms related variety attaches importance to knowledge spillovers across complementary sectors the paper categorizes knowledge into analytical science based synthetic engineering based and symbolic arts based in nature with different requirements of virtual and real proximity mixes the implications of this are traced for evolving platform policies that facilitate economic development within and between regions in action lines appropriate to incorporate the basic principles behind related variety and differentiated knowledge bases asheim b t boschma r and cooke p

socioeconomic impact of wind energy on peripheral regions abstract the socioeconomic benefits from the development of wind power could go beyond environmental issues or the diversification of the energy mix there is an increasing interest in quantifying the impact on regional economies of such deployment especially in those peripheral regions with low growth rates and traditional declined sectors however many studies in this field are meta analyses or they do not take into account the different dynamics between temporal and permanent activities in the sector as well as the regional singularities the main aim of this paper is to analyse the economic impact of wind energy in terms of contribution to the gdp and job creation applying as a case study the spanish peripheral region of galicia this quantification is addressed from a regional and sectoral perspective the methodology is based on the analysis of the value chains regarding the design of the investment breakdown between temporal and permanent activities and the input output approach in order to assess the economic impact in addition the regional symmetric matrices are updated by means of a variation of the ras technique which avoids the fixed technical coefficients related to the traditional input output models empirical evidences underline the remarkable economic impact on the regional gdp and to a lesser extent on the employment although wind sector is capital intensive employment increases in large amounts in industrial subsectors and knowledge intensive activities such as r d hence it might be an industrial alternative in peripheral regions if legislative instability is removed and promotion polices foster the regional value chain

spatial externalities relatedness and sector employment growth in great britain bishop p and gripaios p spatial externalities relatedness and sector employment growth in great britain regional studies this paper examines the impact of externalities on employment growth in sub regions of great britain by estimating ordinary least squares ols and maximum likelihood spatial models at the two digit level for 23 sectors issues arising from relatedness sector differences competition cross boundary spillovers and spatial autocorrelation are explicitly addressed results indicate that specialization has a generally negative impact on growth whilst the impact of diversity is heterogeneous across sectors and strong local competition has a typically positive impact the results question the merits of policies primarily aimed at promoting regional specialization and suggest that diversity local competition and sector heterogeneity are important policy issues bishop p et gripaios p les effets externes geographiques la connectivite et la croissance de l emploi sectoriel en grand