Journal of Economic Geography 7 (2007) pp.

537548
Advance Access Published on 18 June 2007

doi:10.1093/jeg/lbm021

Editorial: Constructing an evolutionary economic

geography
1. Taking evolution seriously in economic geography

The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Downloaded from http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht on November 20, 2015

Change is one of capitalisms constants. As a mode of economic organization, capitalism

never stands still. Its central imperativethe search for profit and wealth creation
drives a perpetual process of economic flux. Every day new firms, new products, new
technologies, new industries and new jobs are added to the economy, whilst old firms,
products, technologies, industries and jobs disappear. Joseph Schumpeter once famously
described this constant flux as a process of creative destruction that incessantly
revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one,
incessantly creating a new one (1942, 82). The economy, in other words, evolves.
Traditionally, economists have not accorded much attention to this issue: in
mainstream theory, for example, any notion of dynamics is limited to the ineluctable
movement of an abstract economy, in abstract time, to some ex ante equilibrium state,
regardless of where it started from. But over the past two decades or so a new
evolutionary economics has emerged that seeks to understand precisely how the real
economy evolves through real time (see, for example, Nelson and Winter, 1982; Dosi
et al., 1988; Hodgson, 1993; Arthur et al., 1997; Foster, 1997; Metcalfe, 1998; Potts,
2000; Fagerberg, 2003; Dopfer, 2004; Metcalfe and Foster, 2004; Witt, 2003, 2006).
To be sure, the rush of enthusiasm to adopt an evolutionary perspective has tended to
produce a plethora of self-declared approachesa massive hybridization of theory, as
Dopfer and Potts (2004a, 195) put itrather than a single coherent body of concepts
and methods. Nevertheless, although the field of evolutionary economics is still without
stabilized shared meaning (Klaes, 2004), and remains somewhat embryonic,
some basic principles do seem to be crystallizing.
According to Witt (2003, 2006), the key focus of evolutionary economics is on the
processes and mechanisms by which the economy self-transforms itself from within.
Thus theories on economic evolution have to satisfy three basic requirements: they must
be dynamical; they must deal with irreversible processes; and they must cover the
generation and impact of novelty as the ultimate source of self-transformation. The first
criterion rules out any kind of static analysis, whilst the second rules out all dynamical
theories that describe stationary states or equilibrium movements. Rather, in the
context of evolutionary economics, dynamical refers to such features as emergence,
convergence, divergence and other irregular patterns and trajectories that are rooted in
real historical time. However, as Witt emphasizes, the third criterion of noveltyits
generation and its role in economic transformationis crucial to any theory of
economic evolution. It is the creative capacity of economic agents (individuals and
firms), and the creative functions of markets, that drive economic evolution and
adaptation. As Schumpeter insisted, transformation arises from within the socioeconomic system, and enterprise-driven adaptive development is the primary process
(Ramlogan and Metcalfe, 2006). Thus innovation and knowledge assume central
importance in evolutionary economics. Knowledge is not something that is separate
from, or autonomous to, the economic process in the manner of some exogenous

538

Editorial

factor of production (as in so-called endogenous growth models); rather it is the

internal development of knowledge that renders the underlying process of economic
evolution both adaptive and transformative in character (Fine, 2000). As Metcalfe et al.
(2006) express it:

Thinking about the economy as a dynamical, irreversible and self-transformational

system thus opens up a quite different canvas for theoretical, ontological and epistemological (methodological) exploration. Indeed, as noted above, and highlighted by
Dopfer, Potts, Klaes and Witt among others, the attraction for many of evolutionary
economics is precisely its permissiveness towards heterodox perspectives and
approaches, and it is perhaps for this reason that a growing number of economic
geographers have begun to explore evolutionary economics as a basis for their subject.
While it would certainly be premature to view this body of work as constituting
the beginnings of a major paradigm shift in the discipline, the evolutionary turn in
economic geography has gained sufficient momentum to merit recognition as a distinctive perspective no less promising in scope than the other approaches to economic
geography that have been proposed in recent years (such as the cultural, institutional
and relational turns).
Not only does an evolutionary perspective open up a new way of thinking about what
is arguably the central concern of economic geographersuneven geographical
developmentit also offers the opportunity to engage with a range of novel concepts
and theoretical ideas drawn from a body of economics that is quite different from
the schools of economic thought that economic geographers have used hitherto.
This opportunity seems timely. Over the past few years, geographers have increasingly
questioned the economic-theoretic foundations of their work, and begun searching for
new and alternative approaches: witness, for example, the appearance of a number
of publications concerned with new theoretic and methodological agendas, such as
Amin and Thrift (2000), Clark et al. (2000), Sheppard and Barnes (2000), Martin and
Sunley (1998, 2001), Leyshon et al. (2003) and Bagchi-Sen and Lawton Smith (2006).
At the same time, mainstream economics itself has begun to encroach on geographers
disciplinary terrain in the guise of its new spatial variant, the so-called new economic
geography (or geographical economics) (see e.g. Fujita et al., 1999; Brakman et al.,
2001; Henderson, 2005).1 Given this opening up of the intellectual terrain of economic
geography, the ideas of evolutionary economics certainly seem worth investigating.
This is the aim of this special issue of the journal, which brings together a number
of articles that from different vantage points and drawing on different versions of
1

For some geographical evaluations of the new economic geography, see Martin and Sunley (1996), Martin
(1999) and Boschma and Frenken (2006).

Downloaded from http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht on November 20, 2015

The origins of restless capitalism lie in its unlimited capacity to generate knowledge and new
behaviour from within, and it is the propensity for endogenous variation that makes it so
dynamic and versatile, sufficiently so that economies may be completely transformed in
structure over relatively short periods of historical time. Growth is not simply a result of
calculation within known circumstances, but of human imagination and the search for novelty
and competitive advantage. Moreover, every advance in knowledge creates the conditions
for further advances . . . economic growth is an autocatalytic process in which change begets
change (p. 9).

Editorial

539

must negotiate a knife edge between preserving the values of past commitments made at
a particular place and time, or devaluing them to open up fresh room for accumulation.
Capitalism perpetually strives, therefore, to create a social and physical landscape in its
own image and requisite to its own needs at a particular point in time, only just as
certainly to undermine, disrupt and even destroy that landscape at a later point in time.
The inner contradictions of capitalism are expressed through the restless formation and
re-formation of geographical landscapes (1985, p.).

However, in the Marxist approach the evolution of the economic landscape is reduced
either to teleological imputationthe result of an ineluctable inner contradiction of
capitalism (an inescapable tendency to periodic over-accumulation crises)or to
unexplained episodic shifts in the technological and organizational bases of the labour
process.3

2
3

These papers all started life, or are based on, presentations made at a European Science Foundation
Exploratory Workshop on Evolutionary Economic Geography held at St Catharines College,
University of Cambridge, in April, 2006. The support of the ESF is gratefully acknowledged.
The first explanation is the basis of David Harveys view of the historical geography of capitalism in terms
of a succession of spatial fixes, whilst the second is to be found in Doreen Masseys account of uneven
geographical development as successive new spatial divisions of labour.

Downloaded from http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht on November 20, 2015

evolutionary economics examine the scope for constructing an evolutionary economic

geography.2
What then are the aims, the distinguishing features, of an evolutionary approach to
economic geography? Put broadly, we can say that the basic concern of evolutionary
economic geography is with the processes by which the economic landscapethe spatial
organization of economic production, distribution and consumptionis transformed over
time. Our concern is both with the ways in which the forces making for economic
change, adaptation and novelty shape and reshape the geographies of production,
distribution and consumption, and with how the spatial structures and features
so produced themselves feed back to influence the forces driving economic evolution.
For the economic landscape is not just the outcome or by-product of the process of
economic evolution, but a determining influence on that process. Economic
transformation proceeds differently in different places, and the mechanisms involved
neither originate nor operate evenly across space. To adopt Schumpeters phrase,
evolutionary economic geography focuses on the creative destruction of economic
landscapes.
It might be argued that this focus is not in fact a novel one for economic geography,
that geographers have long been interested in uneven geographical development,
and that this necessarily implies the transformation of the economic landscape
over time. Indeed, Marxist economic geographers might well claim that their approach
to this issue is strongly evolutionary in nature. In the radical Marxist theories of
geographically uneven development in the 1980s, the focus was very much on the
tension between fixity and flux in the economic landscape, on how spatial and regional
configurations of economic activity, production and employment tend to be selfreproducing but are also disrupted from time to time and replaced by new spatial
configurations. Thus we could cite David Harvey, when in a depiction that is highly
redolent of Schumpeter, he argues how capitalism:

540

Editorial

Downloaded from http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht on November 20, 2015

Evolutionary economic geography approaches the development and transformation

of the economic landscape in a rather different way. It seeks to apply the core
concepts from evolutionary economics to explain uneven geographical development
(see for example, Boschma and Van der Knaap, 1997; Rigby and Essletzbichler, 1997;
Storper, 1997, Cooke and Morgan, 1998; Boschma and Lambooy, 1999; Essletzbichler
and Winther, 1999; Martin, 2000; Essletzbichler and Rigby, 2004; Hassink, 2005;
Boschma and Frenken, 2006; Iammarino and McCann, 2006; Martin and Sunley, 2006;
Frenken, 2007). The emphasis is on the processes and mechanisms that make for or
hinder the adaptation of the economic landscape, and how spatial and historical
contingency interact with systemic necessity. Thus evolutionary economic geography
is quintessentially concerned with the spatialities of economic novelty (innovations,
new firms, new industries), with how the spatial structures of the economy emerge
from the micro-behaviours of economic agents (individuals, firms, institutions);
with how, in the absence of central coordination or direction, the economic landscape
exhibits self-organization; and with how the processes of path creation and path
dependence interact to shape geographies of economic development and transformation,
and why and how such processes are themselves place dependent (Martin and
Sunley, 2006).
In applying the ideas and concepts of evolutionary economics to these issues,
geographers are confronted with some intriguing if challenging choices. As noted above
there is as yet no single, coherent or widely agreed body of theory or methodology that
defines evolutionary economics. Much of evolutionary economics thus far has tended to
draw on evolutionary biology for its ideas, especially the notions of novelty, variety,
selection, adaptation and inheritance. Part of the challenge for evolutionary economic
geography, then, is to explore how far and in what ways it is possible to give such
notions and metaphors meaningful geographical interpretations. At the same time,
a second main strand of evolutionary economics that has begun to emerge draws on the
key ideas associated with complexity science (dissipation, far-from-equilibrium,
emergence, self-organization, criticality, co-evolution). The same task holds here: how
far and in what ways does the field of complexity economics provide a useful basis
for constructing an evolutionary economic geography? Further, what are the links and
relationships between these two broad approachesevolutionary biology and
complexity theory?
As numerous authors have warned, the abduction of metaphors and concepts from
one field into another can be problematic (Wimmer and Kossler, 2006). Nevertheless,
despite the risks and inherent dangers involved, importing metaphors and concepts and
methodologies from other disciplinary fields remains one of the major sources
of theoretical and empirical development, providing not only new perspectives but in
the process stimulating conceptual innovation and creating new intellectual contact
points and avenues for cross-disciplinary co-operation. Such potential benefits
are undoubtedly a major factor stimulating evolutionary approaches to economic
geography. However, it is not simply a case of applying such concepts and their
theoretical and methodological frameworks to economic geography, though this
in itself is a challenging task. For an evolutionary economic geography cannot
simply be derivative in its ambitions. The goal must also be to reveal how situating
the economy in space adds to our understanding of the processes that drive
economic evolution, that is to say, to demonstrate how place matters in
determining the nature and trajectory of evolution of the economic system. The articles

Editorial

541

in this special issue, though exploratory in nature, all have this ultimate goal as a
basic premise.

2. Explorations in evolutionary economic geography:

the contributions

Downloaded from http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht on November 20, 2015

In pursuing this aim, the six contributions that follow share certain common
predispositions. Notwithstanding the lack of any single coherent framework in evolutionary economics, all contributions recognize that evolutionary economics offers new
and promising insights with which to explore the scope and nature of an evolutionary
approach to economic geography, whether this be the notions and metaphors
associated with Darwinian evolutionary theory (such as variety, selection, retention
and the like), or concepts taken from complexity theory (such as the emergence,
self-organisation, dissipation, criticality). Further, all subscribe to the aim, central to
evolutionary thinking, of linking the micro-economic behaviour of agents (firms,
individuals) to the macro outcomes of the economic landscape (as embodied in
networks, clusters, agglomerations, etc.). Beyond the common emphases and concerns,
however, each contribution addresses particular issues and employs specific concepts
and methodologies.
In their contribution, Jurgen Essletzbichler and David Rigby apply the holy trinity
of Darwinian thinking to the topic of the spatial evolution of industries, with a special
focus on the evolution of intra- and inter-regional variety. They argue that existing
work in evolutionary economic geography tends to follow a strategy of borrowing
evolutionary metaphors and analogies that are applied in a piecemeal fashion to specific
topics in economic geography. To establish a more systematic and coherent research
paradigm in evolutionary economic geography, they propose an approach that builds
on the evolutionary principles of variety, selection and retention. Generalized
Darwinism provides such a coherent analytical framework. It basically describes how
competition produces distinct regions in which firms share properties that differentiate
them from competitors in other regions. These evolutionary processes are empirically
illustrated by the evolution of plant-specific technologies across US regions in
some manufacturing industries. According to Essletzbichler and Rigby, one of the
key research challenges in evolutionary economic geography is to examine at what
spatial levels (and how) selection operates, and how this affects the development of
routines and the survival of firms over time.
Ron Martin and Peter Sunley explore the potential scope and limits of another strand
of evolutionary theory, that is, complexity theory, to construct an evolutionary
perspective in economic geography. An initial problem is that complexity economics is
far from being fully developed and accepted. In addition, Martin and Sunley argue that
there has been a tendency to base complexity economics uncritically on the formal
(mathematical) models of complex systems found in the natural sciences, whereas the
first task should be an ontological one; that is to determine what it means to think
about the economyand by extension the economic landscapeas a complex system.
In what sense can complexity theory notions (or metaphors), such as the emergence,
self-organization, criticality and so on, be used to conceptualize the economic
landscape? They propose a social-ontological approach that analyses how complexity
is spatially distributed, spatially embedded and spatially emergent. More particularly,

542

Editorial

Downloaded from http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht on November 20, 2015

Martin and Sunley argue that a key aim of a complexity-based evolutionary economic
geography is to analyse how the economic landscape shapes and is shaped by the
emergence and diffusion of knowledge and new economic activities. Overall, they claim
that complexity thinking offers considerable scope for understanding of the evolution of
the economic landscape, but that some difficult and as yet unresolved conceptual
problems must first be addressed.
In their article, Peter Maskell and Anders Malmberg claim that the interplay
between processes of knowledge development and institutional dynamics constitutes the
core of evolutionary economic geography. Evolutionary economic geography should be
firmly grounded in specifying the drivers and constraints that channel actions
of individuals in general and knowledge creation in particular. At the micro level,
this results in localized learning, because learning is directed by localized capabilities
and facilitated by spatial proximity, and often leads to what the authors call spatial
myopia. At the macro level, institutions contribute to this even further. Institutions
provide incentives and constraints for new knowledge creation at the regional level,
resulting in the selection and retention of regional development paths. Maskell and
Malmberg use these evolutionary processes at the micro and macro levels as inputs to
describe and explain the evolution of spatial business clusters. Interestingly, such an
evolutionary perspective regards the rise and decline of clusters as being the result of
myopic behaviour. Clusters also offer opportunities to relieve the limits of myopic
behaviour at the firm level, but, on the other hand, clusters may also hinder the
innovativeness of local firms due to processes of local technological and knowledge
lock-in. According to Maskell and Malmberg, an evolutionary perspective highlights
the need for research on how processes at the micro-level may break such tendencies
to territorial lock-in.
The contribution of Johannes Gluckler links an evolutionary perspective on networks
with the emerging project of evolutionary economic geography. He argues that the
network has been used in economic geography as an important structural concept.
However, an evolutionary perspective on networks is needed to understand how
networks are formed and change in space over time. He makes an attempt to develop
a conceptual framework of geographical network trajectories that applies the
Darwinian notions of selection, retention and variation to network evolution in
space. Gluckler explains that network-specific mechanisms make networks evolve
through the formation of new ties and the dissolution of existing ties. This leaves an
imprint on geography, but geography itself (through proximity and place-specific
characteristics) also impacts on network evolution. In addition, he makes a crucial
distinction between network evolution based on path dependence (reflecting more
cumulative and stable patterns) and structural change (involving path creation and path
destruction). With respect to the latter, he claims that new variety in networks comes
about by bridging unconnected networks in space through various mechanisms.
According to Gluckler, an evolutionary approach linking networks and geography
should basically focus on exploring endogenous mechanisms of network evolution
that produce retention and variation of network structures in space over time.
Koen Frenken and Ron Boschma propose an evolutionary framework providing
a micro-foundation of industrial dynamics and urban growth. Inspired by Penroses
view of firm growth as a process of progressive product diversification, they describe
economic development as an evolutionary branching process that generates an
ever-increasing variety of products in an economy. More particularly, Frenken and

Editorial

543

3. Taking the project forward

Together, the contributions open up some promising avenues of enquiry. In so doing,
they also raise a number of key issues that require particular conceptual interrogation
and elaboration.
A fundamental question relates to how we think about change in the economic
landscape. While Schumpeters notion of creative destruction conjures up an image of
continuous, gradual steady change (or mutation, as he referred to it), he also
emphasized the importance of periodic gales of creative destruction that produce
major historical changes in the trajectory and nature of economic development. Both
evolutionary biology and complexity theory tend to operate with a not dissimilar notion
of punctuated equilibrium, that is, a view of evolution in which episodes of relative
stability or gradualism alternate with major shocks or criticalities that shift the system
to a new configuration and phase of relative stability or gradualism. How such ideas
fit with an evolutionary perspective on the economic landscape is itself a challenging
question.

Downloaded from http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht on November 20, 2015

Boschma define growth as stemming from product innovations leading to new

product divisions in existing or new firms, and in existing or new cities. Doing so,
firm growth and urban growth are to be understood as the outcome of a single
stochastic growth process, from which firm size and city size distributions can be
derived. By distinguishing between radical and incremental product innovations,
growth can be decomposed into different stages of the industry life cycle, each of
which has a distinctive spatial evolution. In addition, growth is endogenous because
the probability of innovation increases non-linearly with the variety available for
recombination at the firm level and the city level. Thus, variety in firms and cities is
considered the driving force of feedback mechanisms in economic development
that generate path dependence in the spatial concentration of industries and the
specialization of cities.
Giulio Bottazzi, Giovanni Dosi, Giorgio Fagiolo and Angelo Secchi take an
evolutionary perspective on agglomeration economies to explain the distribution of
economic activities (or specific industries) in time and space. Their objective is to
explore the properties of a family of evolutionary models of industrial location and to
obtain empirically testable formulations. In doing so, they make explicit how such
an approach differs from the New Economic Geography when addressing the question
why economic activities tend to cluster in space. Bottazzi et al. describe the entry and
exit process of firms as a finite Markov chain, in order to explore the effect of
agglomeration economies on the evolution of the spatial distribution of economic
activities. In their basic model, the locational preference of heterogeneous firms is
influenced by two basic elements: the intrinsic attractiveness of locations, and
agglomeration forces. The agglomeration effect is made endogenous because it is
dependent on the number of incumbent firms in the region. When the agglomeration
effect becomes higher, their simulations show that the spatial system tends to move
toward more polarized distributions that are quite stable over time. In the final part of
their contribution, Bottazzi et al. present a number of empirical issues for future
research that are derived from their evolutionary model. They also suggest some
extensions of their approach, which are required to develop what they call a fully
fledged evolutionary model that is explicitly nested in space.

544

Editorial

A second questionand equally fundamentalis what the basic ontological unit of

enquiry should be. What is it that evolves? As Martin and Sunley in their contribution
stress, evolutionary economic geography requires an ontology for an evolving economic
landscape. A recurring theme in evolutionary economics is that knowledge in the
form of rules is the basic ontological concept:

According to these authors, the rule ontology of knowledge is held to extend across
many economic concepts: markets, firms, competences, agents and institutions are
clusters of rules. Statistical aspects of rule adoption are part of the macro-growth of
knowledge. This would suggest that an evolutionary perspective on the economic
landscape would interpret the structures and features of that landscapespatial
agglomerations, industrial districts, networks, clusters, cities, etcas the manifestations
of systems of rules, or knowledge. That is, the economic landscape is the product
of knowledge, and the evolution of that landscape is shaped by changes in knowledge.
But as geographers have begun to show, places also produce knowledge: that is to say,
places condition and constrain how knowledge and rules develop. This idea of the
economic landscape as both the product and the source of knowledge should arguably
be at the core of evolutionary economic geography. We have barely begun to articulate
such a conception (Boschma, 2004).
Relatedly, how do the metaphors of variety, fitness and emergence taken from
evolutionary biology and complexity, carry over to economics and economic
geography? A key challenge of an evolutionary approach in economic geography is
to explain novelty and structural change (or what Darwin called in biology the mystery
of all mysteries) (Boschma and Lambooy, 1999). For instance, there is still little
understanding of how individuals that are constrained by durable institutions can
initiate change and transformation (Maskell and Malmberg, this issue). We do not
really understand why some regional economies are capable of adapting themselves
despite firm-specific routines and region-specific institutional inertia, while other
regions seem to lack such adaptability (Essletzbichler and Rigby, this issue). The same
applies to disruptions and change in networks that are normally characterized by
durability and reproduction: who of the agents in the network, and why, will behave
differently and step outside the logic of network formation they were previously
subjected to, dissolving existing networks and creating new network configurations
(Gluckler, this issue)? Equally, why do new clusters emerge in particular locations and
not others? These issues are only now beginning to be taken up, and are central to an
evolutionary approach on cluster evolution.
Another key challenge of any evolutionary approach is to determine at what spatial
scales selection takes place. As Essletzbichler and Rigby point out, selection
environments can span local, regional, national and global spaces. In this respect,
an evolutionary approach in economic geography should aim at isolating

Downloaded from http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht on November 20, 2015

The central idea in our framework of evolutionary economics is that an economic system is
made up of knowledge in the form of rules. Rules are the elements of knowledge in the form of
a structure and process . . . Economics, when viewed from an evolutionary perspective, is not
methodologically centred on the individual agent, but rather on the individual unit of
knowledge, the rule. The rule is carried by the agent, but an evolutionary description of the
economic system requires focus upon the dynamics of the rule populations (Dopfer and Potts,
2004b, 810).

Editorial

545

Downloaded from http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht on November 20, 2015

the impact of place-specific factors on the development of routines and the

survival of firms, and determine at what spatial levels selection forces are
especially strong. A simple example is provided by Hannan et al. (1995) who use
a population ecology approach to examine at what spatial levels positive
feedbacks through knowledge spillovers operate in a newly emerging industry,
and at what spatial levels negative feedbacks arise due to competition. In this
respect, one expects an industry to concentrate spatially when the relevant knowledge
spillovers are more local while competition (demand) is more global. The window
of locational opportunity concept provides another example, because it aims to
determine the extent to which, and where, such windows are open as soon as a new
industry emerges (Storper and Walker, 1989; Boschma and Lambooy, 1999). However,
its empirical foundation needs to be developed further. In their contribution,
Essletzbichler and Rigby employ a clustering technique to identify clusters based on
the use of plant-specific technologies across US regions within a given industry. Their
empirical analysis is used to decide the spatial level at which clusters exist, and hence
where processes of innovation, imitation and selection may be expected to operate
and concentrate.
Yet another central idea in evolutionary economics that is of considerable
importance for understanding change and continuity in the economic landscape is
path dependence. As the detailed discussion in Martin and Sunley (2006) highlights,
the term is often used by economic geographers, but has rarely been properly
conceptualized. In their view, path dependent processes have a quintessential
place-dependent character, so that it is not simply a case of arguing that path
dependence produces places, but equally that places produce path dependence.
Conceptualizing the nature and role of path dependence in the economic landscape
is a core component of the research agenda of evolutionary economic geography.
So too is the notion of self-organization. How the observed spatial structure and order
of the economy emerges, and then itself exerts downward causation on that economy
is arguably one of the foundational research questions of evolutionary economic
geography (see Martin and Sunley, this issue). But it is also one of the least understood.
We have little knowledge of how spatial structures, institutions and micro-economic
behaviours co-evolve, or why such co-evolution varies over space (see Maskell
and Malmberg, this issue).
The challenges of course are not solely conceptual. An evolutionary perspective views
spatial structures as the outcome of historical processes, and as conditioning and
constraining micro-economic behaviour. To examine the explicit historical nature of
evolutionary processes in space, an evolutionary perspective needs historical time-series
data on individuals, firms, industries, technologies, sectors, networks, cities, regions
and the like, which are not always easy to obtain or construct. Apart from data
limitations, there is a need for sophisticated methodologies that can cope with
the explicit dynamic nature of evolutionary processes in economic geography.
Several approaches are being pursued in evolutionary economic geography, ranging
from case study research and network analysis, to duration models, simulation methods
and the use of spatial econometrics, depending on the research question concerned
and the data available. This methodological openness may be considered a strength
of evolutionary economic geography, as compared to neoclassical- and institutionalbased approaches (Boschma and Frenken, 2006). For example, in comparison to
neoclassical approaches (including the new economic geography), an evolutionary

546

Editorial

Ron Boschma and Ron Martin

Department of Economic Geography,
Faculty of Geosciences,
Utrecht University,
NL-3508 TC, Netherlands.
email 5r.boschma@geo.uu.nl4
Department of Geography,
University of Cambridge,
Cambridge CB2 3EN, UK.
email 5rlm1@cam.ac.uk4

References
Amin, A. and Thrift, N. J. (2000) What kind of economics for what kind of economic geography?
Antipode, 32: 49
Arthur, W. B., Durlauf, S., Lane, D. (eds) (1997) The Economy as a Complex Evolving System, II.
Reading, MA: Perseus Books.
Bagchi-Sen, S. and Lawton Smith, H. (eds) (2006) Economic Geography: Past, Present and Future,
Routledge Studies in Economic Geography. London: Routledge.
Boschma, R. A. (2004) The competitiveness of regions from an evolutionary perspective, Regional
Studies, 38: 10011014.
Boschma, R. A. and Van der Knaap, G. A. (1997) New technology and windows of locational
opportunity. Indeterminacy, creativity and chance. In J. Reijnders (ed.) Economics and
Evolution, pp. 171202. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Boschma, R. A. and Lambooy, J. G. (1999) Evolutionary economics and economic geography,
Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 9: 411429.
Boschma, R. A. and Frenken, K. (2006) Why is economic geography not an evolutionary
science? Towards an evolutionary economic geography, Journal of Economic Geography, 6:
273302.
Brakman, S., Garretsen, H., van Marrewijk, C. (2001) An Introduction to Geographical
Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clark, G. L., Feldman, M., Gertler, M. (2000) (eds) Handbook of Economic Geography. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Cooke, P. and Morgan, K. (1998) The Associational Economy. Firms, Regions, and Innovation.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Downloaded from http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht on November 20, 2015

approach to economic geography provides a powerful alternative because it grounds

formal theorizing in more realistic assumptions (like bounded rationality and
disequilibrium). On the other hand, methodological openness may carry its own
problems and dangers, not least concerning the scope and limits of methodological
triangulation.
These, then, are just some of the challenges confronting the research agenda in
evolutionary economic geography. As the contributions to this special issue testify,
these are challenges worth pursuing. Any new disciplinary approach can be defined or
delimited in three ways: in terms of its object of study; by its core concepts and
principles; and in socio-institutional terms (as a community of scholars with a shared
perspective and language). Whilst evolutionary economic geography is still under
construction, hopefully this special issue will help advance the paradigm on all three
of these fronts.

Editorial

547

Downloaded from http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht on November 20, 2015

Dopfer, K. (ed.) (2004) The Evolutionary Foundations of Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.
Dopfer, K. and Potts, J. (2004a) Evolutionary realism: a new ontology for economics, Journal of
Economic Methodology, 11: 195212.
Dopfer, K. and Potts, J. (2004b) Evolutionary foundations of economics. In J. S. Metcalfe and
J. Foster (eds) Evolution and Economic Complexity, pp. 323. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Dosi, G., Freeman, C., Nelson, R., Silverberg, G., Soete, L. (1988) Technical Change and
Economic Theory. London: Pinter.
Essletzbichler and Winther (1999) Regional technological change and path dependency
in the danish food processing industry, Geografiska Annaler, B Human Geography, 81: 179196.
Essletzbichler, J. and Rigby, D. (2004) Competition, variety and the geography of technology
evolution, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 96: 4862.
Fagerberg, J. (2003) Schumpeter and the revival of evolutionary economics: an appraisal,
Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 13: 125159.
Fine, B. (2000) Endogenous growth theory: a critical assessment, Cambridge Journal of
Economics, 24: 245265.
Foster, J. (1997) The analytical foundations of evolutionary economics: from biological
analogy to economic self organization, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 8:
427451.
Frenken, K. (ed.) (2007) Applied Evolutionary Economics and Economic Geography. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar.
Fujita, M., Krugman, P., Venables, A. (1999) The Spatial Economy. Cities, Regions and
International Trade. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hannan, M. T., Carroll, G. R., Dundon, E. A., Torres, J. C. (1995) Organizational evolution in
a multinational context. Entries of automobile manufacturers in Belgium, Britain, France,
Germany and Italy, American Sociological Review, 60: 509528.
Harvey, D. (1985) The geopolitics of capitalism. In D. Gregory and J. Urry (eds) Social Relations
and Spatial Structures, pp. 128163. London: Macmillan.
Hassink, R. (2005) How to unlock regional economies from path dependency? From learning
region to learning cluster, European Planning Studies, 13: 521535.
Henderson, V. (ed.) (2005) New Economic Geography. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Hodgson, G. (1993) Economics and Evolution: Bringing Life Back into Economics. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Iammarino, S. and McCann, P. (2006) The structure and evolution of industrial clusters.
Transactions, technology and knowledge spillovers, Research Policy, 35: 10181036.
Klaes, M. (2004) Evolutionary economics: in defence of Vagueness, Journal of Economic
Methodology, 11: 359376.
Leyshon, A., Lee, R., Williams, C. C. (2003) Alternative Economic Spaces.
Martin, R. L. (1999) The new geographical turn in economics: some critical reflections,
Cambridge Journal of Economics, 23: 6591.
Martin, R. L. (2000) Institutional approaches to economic geography. In E. Sheppard and
T. Barnes (eds) A Companion to Economic Geography, pp. 7794. Oxford: Blackwell.
Martin, R. L. and Sunley, P. J. (1996) Paul Krugmans geographical economics and its
implications for regional development theory, Economic Geography, 33: 148161.
Martin, R. L. and Sunley, P. J. (1998) Slow convergence? The new endogenous growth theory and
regional development, Economic Geography, 74: 201227.
Martin, R. L. and Sunley, P. J. (2001) Rethinking the economic in economic geography:
broadening our vision or losing our focus, Antipode, 33: 148161.
Martin, R. L. and Sunley, P. J. (2006) Path dependence and regional economic evolution, Journal
of Economic Geography, 6: 395435.
Maskell, P. (2001) Towards a knowledge-based theory of the geographical cluster, Industrial and
Corporate Change, 10: 919941.
Metcalfe, J. S. (1998) Evolutionary Economics and Creative Destruction. London: Routledge.
Metcalfe, J. S. and Foster, J. (eds) (2004) Evolution and Economic Complexity. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar.
Metcalfe, J. S., Foster, J., Ramlogan, R. (2006) Adaptive economic growth, Cambridge Journal of
Economics, 30: 732.

548

Editorial

Downloaded from http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht on November 20, 2015

Nelson, R. R. and Winter, S. (1982) An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Belknap:

Harvard University Press.
Potts, J. (2000) The New Evolutionary Micro-economics: Complexity, Competence and Adaptive
Behaviour. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Ramlogan, R. and Metcalfe, J. S. (2006) Restless capitalism: a complexity perspective on modern
capitalist economies. In E. Garnsey and J. McGlade (eds) Complexity and Co-Evolution:
Continuity and Change in Socio-Economics Systems, pp. 115146. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Rigby, D. L. and Essletzbichler, J. (1997) Evolution, process variety, and regional trajectories of
technological change in U.S. manufacturing, Economic Geography, 73: 269283.
Schumpeter, J. A. (1942) Capitalism. Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper.
Sheppard, E. and Barnes, T. J. (eds) (2000) A Companion to Economic Geography. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Storper, M. (1997) The Regional World. Territorial Development in a Global Economy. London:
Guilford Press.
Storper, M. and Walker, R. (1989) The Capitalist Imperative. Territory, Technology and
Industrial Growth. New York: Basil Blackwell.
Wimmer, A. and Kossler, R. (eds) (2006) Understanding Change: Models, Methodologies and
Metaphors. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Witt, U. (2003) The Evolving Economy. Essays on the Evolutionary Approach to Economics.
Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Witt, U. (2006) Evolutionary Economics. Papers on Economics and Evolution, No. 0605,
Max Planck Institute of Economics, Evolutionary Economics Group, Jena.