Growth, Trade and Economic Institutions
Endogenous growth is examined from the viewpoint of economic history, institutions and international trade. The main results are the following. The variance in institutional quality can be explained by historical differences in biogeographical potential for early agriculture. The expansion of output can lead to dis-agglomeration. The patterns of growth are sensitive to the technology parameters of the capital-good industry. With capital intensive industries, the balanced growth path can exhibit local indeterminacy. Economies integrate, if the productivity of R&D does not vary too much for them. Other aspects examined are the equilibrium of a dynamic multi-sector economy, the political economy of employment protection and the relationship between technological change and the demand for skill-intensive activities.
Food powders : Physical properties, processing, and functionality
Food Powders: Physical Properties, Processing, and Functionality is a comprehensive review on the characterization of ingredients, semi-processed and finished products when they are in a powdered form. It includes the description of different industrial unit operations such as drying, grinding, mixing, agglomeration, and encapsulation that supply food powders of different composition and microstructure. It also includes several analytical tools to characterize food powders by their particle size, size distribution, physical properties, and functionality.
European Metropolitan Housing Markets
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of housing theory and policy with a focus on metropolitan regions. The results are based on case studies of twelve European metropolitan regions, including expert panels organized in each. Using an approach from the field of industrial economics, the analysis is divided into the three related stages "structure", "conduct" and "performance." The essential idea is that the structure of a market, defined by market conditions, market growth, forms of competition and control, influences the economic behavior of both companies and households. The effects of this behavior can be observed in the development of prices; exchanged, constructed and maintained housing quantities; location patterns and choice of space.
European Aeronautics : The Southwestern Axis
The book covers both the analysis of the major producer of civil aircraft (EADS/Airbus) located in the region and its relation with the cluster of enterprises within those regions.
Emerging States and Economies : Their Origins, Drivers, and Challenges Ahead
This book asks why and how some of the developing countries have “emerged” under a set of similar global conditions, what led individual countries to choose the particular paths that led to their “emergence,” and what challenges confront them. If we are to understand the nature of major risks and uncertainties in the world, we must look squarely at the political and economic dynamics of emerging states. Their rapid economic development has changed the distribution of wealth and power in the world. Yet many of them have middle income status. To global governance issues, they tend to adopt approaches that differ from those of advanced industrialized democracies. At home, rapid economic growth and social changes put pressure on their institutions to change. This volume traces the historical trajectories of two major emerging states. It also analyzes cross-country data to find the general patterns of economic development and sociopolitical change in relation to globalization and to the middle income trap.
Learning from clusters : A critical assessment from an economic-geographical perspective
Edited volumes run the danger of being a hotchpotch of contributions on a wide variety of topics. Here, we have explicitly focused on a central theme in contemporary economic geography and regional science, namely the relationship between learning, innovation and clustering. Internationally renowned scientists made both theoretical and empirical contributions to this volume. We think this book constitutes a broad palette of contemporary thinking and research on the relationship between spatial concentration and innovation and hope it will play a significant role in future debates on this issue.
Browning Agents and Active Particles : Collective Dynamics in the Natural and Social Sciences
Lays out a vision for a coherent framework for understanding complex systems'' (from the foreword by J. Doyne Farmer). By developing the genuine idea of Brownian agents, the author combines concepts from informatics, such as multiagent systems, with approaches of statistical many-particle physics. This way, an efficient method for computer simulations of complex systems is developed which is also accessible to analytical investigations and quantitative predictions. The book demonstrates that Brownian agent models can be successfully applied in many different contexts, ranging from physicochemical pattern formation, to active motion and swarming in biological systems, to self-assembling of networks, evolutionary optimization, urban growth, economic agglomeration and even social systems.
A life cycle for clusters? : The dynamics of agglomeration, change, and adaption
The phenomenon of non-random spatial concentrations of firms in one or few related sectors (clusters) is intensively debated in economic theory and policy. The euphoria about successful clusters however neglects that historically, many thriving clusters did deteriorate into old industrial areas. This book studies the determinants of cluster survival by analyzing their adaptability to change in the economic environment. Linking theoretic knowledge with empirical observations, a simulation model (based in the N/K method) is developed, which explains when and why the cluster's architecture assists or hampers adaptability. It is found that architectures with intermediate degrees of division of labour and more collective governance forms foster adaptability. Cluster development is thus path dependent as architectures having evolved over time impact on the likelihood of future survival.







