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Three important aspects of development—per capita income, state capabilities, and (the absence of) political violence—are correlated with each other at the country level. This article discusses the causes of such development clusters and highlights two explanations: common economic, political, and social drivers and complementarities (two-way positive feedbacks). It also draws out preliminary policy implications of these patterns of development and proposes topics for further research.

As advances in transportation and information obliterate distance, cities and regions face a tougher time anchoring income-generating activities. In probing the conditions under which some manage to remain \"sticky\" places in \"slippery\" space, this paper rejects the \"new industrial district,\" in either its Marshallian or more recent Italianate form, as the dominant paradigmatic solution. I identify three additional types of industrial districts, with quite disparate firm configurations, internal versus external orientations, and governance structures: a hub-and-spoke industrial district, revolving around one or more dominant, externally oriented firms; a satellite platform, an assemblage of unconnected branch plants embedded in external organization links; and the state-anchored district, focused on one or more public-sector institutions. The strengths and weaknesses of each are reviewed. The hub-and-spoke and satellite platform variants are argued to be more prominent in the United States than the other two. The findings suggest that the study of industrial districts requires a broader institutional approach and must encompass embeddedness across district boundaries. The research results suggest that a purely locally targeted development strategy will fail to achieve its goals.

Transfer of newly created money through unconventional monetary measures follows the official European Central Bank distribution key. Yet, it does not take into account the ability of individual countries to drive growth process in other economies. Money spent to boost domestic credit provisioning in growth pole-like economies is more likely to spill over to other adjoined economies and help them to recover, even in the presence of depressed domestic demand and/or overleveraged domestic banking sector. Purpose of the article: This paper reports growth pole scores for 19 euro area countries, and compares it to the official distribution key used to transmit newly created source of funding. Methods: We modify the procedure developed in World Bank (2011) for growth pole computation in order to account for strength of linkages connecting member states. Findings Value added: Our results suggest that the official distribution key might not be completely optimal once looking at the growth pole scores. Countries small in economic size (Baltic states, Slovakia and Slovenia) would benefit from a more differentiated distribution, as they strongly outperform their benchmark set by the official distribution key. On the other hand, big euro area economies do not achieve the levels used in official distribution key, taking into account their growth pole potential for other euro area economies.

Objective: The objective of this paper is to present the effects of special economic zones (SEZ) on the polarisation of public economic space in Polish regions. Research Design Methods: The paper looks at both positive and negative effects of economic zones on the polarization of economic space in Polish regions. In an empirical analysis of internal and external effects of SEZs growth centres are identified. Centre of the polarised region, as a source of development incentives, characterised with a higher growth dynamics in comparison to the other part of the region is identified as a growth pole; while the centre of a polarised region being a source of crisis factors higher than in the region is identified as an anti-growth pole. Findings: In the result of conducted studies 8 growth poles, 19 centres of unstable economic situation have been identified, anti-growth poles has not been identified. Factors that result in the polarisation as well as its positive and negative characteristics were identified. Implications Recommendations: The new model, which captures growing changes and can activate an appropriate action aimed at avoiding crisis can be used as a potential early warning system by the authorities of territorial units. Contribution Value Added: The originality of this work lies in proposing a new methodological approach to identify poles and anti-poles. This approach can be applied for various tiers of taxonomic division for regions in various countries and forms of public aid.

We study the coagglomeration of domestic plants and foreign multinationals and the impact of this on domestic plant productivity and employment using data for Irish manufacturing. Relying on a recently developed index, we find that coagglomeration has been important for a number of industries. Our econometric analysis reveals that local foreign presence has indeed resulted in productivity spillovers to domestic plants, although only in those industries where there has been coagglomeration. Further evidence suggests that these spillovers have also resulted in more jobs. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd

In the twenty-first century, nearly 70% of new jobs in the US have been in services, matching worldwide expansion of the services sector. This paper discusses the role of services in advanced economies internationally as a vehicle for ongoing growth and prosperity. The discussion will be frames through pole theory. Contributions of private, profit driven service activity is assessed. Services provide stability while contributing to the growth process, and may constitute growth poles on their own as in money markets and insurance. Services facilitate business and business change, both in domestic and international markets.

In the current scenario, a large and growing number of policies for local development and cluster upgrading explicitly incorporate the idea of innovation as a systemic process, embedded in specific socio-cultural and institutional contexts and intermingled with international challenges, opportunities, and strategies. These policies bring new challenges to the activities of analysis and evaluation: despite the diffusion of a systemic approach both in innovation thinking and in innovation policies, a proper system-based framework for the analysis and evaluation of these policies is far from being achieved (Bellandi and Caloffi, 2010). Trying to advance our reflection on this field, we propose some exemplifications on a quite delimited set of contexts, i.e. those of industrial districts (Italian, in particular), characterized by SMEs clusters facing contemporary globalization challenges. Focusing on innovation policies aimed at supporting functional upgrading of districts and clusters soaked in changing international filières and value chains, the paper discusses the meaning of evaluation of industrial policies when a systemic perspective is considered. On such premises a couple of exemplifications are illustrated some features of appropriate evaluation methods. Finally, some methodological aspects concerning the design process of evaluation activities are discussed.

The core of classical economic analysis represented by William Petty and Adam Smith concentrated on the field of development economics. This classical footing of the study of development is different from the neoclassical perspective in two important respects: (a) it focuses on division of labor as the driving force of development, and (b) it emphasizes the role of the market (the \"invisible hand\") in exploiting productivity gains that are derived from division of labor. However these aspects have received little attention in the body of literature that represents the modern field of development economics - which largely represents the neoclassical application of marginalism. A notable exception is research that utilizes inframarginal analysis of individuals' networking decisions in an attempt to formalize the classical mechanisms that drive division of labor. This book is a first attempt to collect relevant key contributions and is intended for active researchers in the field of development economics.