Regional Innovation and Competitiveness in a Dynamic Representation

This paper combines the various strands of literature on knowledge and innovation as drivers of regional growth in an evolutionary model, representing the internal dynamics of a regional system focusing on Arthurian dynamic increasing returns to scale. The model shows how different evolutionary patterns can arise starting from identical local systems, and that the effects of policies are different depending on the state of the system. Simulation evolutionary economic geography models also allow to represent the complexity of spatial economic development without radically simplifying it and to formalize concepts which are otherwise only expressed—by economic geographers—as logical arguments.