clusters
Join the Southern Advanced Materials in Transportation Alliance (SAMTA)
Want to participate in a new concept in innovation clusters? The Southern Advanced Materials in Transportation Alliance (SAMTA) is a regional innovation cluster that promotes the research, commercialization, and production of new and specialized materials important to the automotive and aerospace industries. Although traditional clusters are based on geographic concentration, SAMTA will use telecommunications networks to minimize geographic distance and facilitate the industry network. The Economic Development Administration has provided seed funding for this project.
Brookings Explores Cluster-Based Frameworks for Economic Development
Regional innovation clusters can be a useful framework in understanding the high-tech economy, but only if local leaders recognize the limits of cluster-based strategies, according to a recent study by the Brookings Institution. Authors Mark Muro and Bruce Katz suggest that research has confirmed the positive impact clusters can have for local workers, firms and regions, but that effective policy interventions must focus on targeted initiatives to foster existing clusters.
The Tenth Districts Defining Industries: Changes and Opportunities for Rural Communities
The brief looks at the potential growth of certain industries in the Tenth District of the U.S. Federal Reserve. It identifies emerging industries that might be growth sectors for the district and its rural areas, including telecommunications, office administration, software design and medical diagnostics.
Industry Clusters Shape Texas Economy
This report uses clusters analysis based on employment numbers to examine the economy of Texas. The states economy flourished in the 1990s, took a hard hit in the 2001 recession and bounced back beginning in mid-2003. The states four major metros and its border cities also went through the expansion and contraction, albeit at different paces.
Exploring the Relationship Between Scientist Human Capital and Firm Performance: The Case of Biomedical Academic Entrepreneurs in the SBIR Program
This report investigates if the background of an entrepreneurial researcher makes an impact on the activities of the firm. The authors find that biomedical academic entrepreneurs with human capital oriented toward exploring scientific opportunities significantly improve their firms performance of research tasks such as proof of concept studies. Biomedical academic entrepreneurs with human capital oriented toward exploring commercial opportunities significantly improve their firms performance of invention oriented tasks such as patenting.
Understanding Local Content Decisions: Economic Analysis and an Application to the Automotive Industry
In industrializing regions, foreign investments often generate spillovers through regional backward links. This situation may create a gap between private and social valuations of resources, resulting in a level of local content below what would be optimal for the economy. This situation creates an opportunity for the enactment of domestic content regulations. This paper presents a model to understand how these policies condition the decisions of the economic agents and affect economic welfare. Then, it simulates the model using a case study of the automotive sector.
Agglomeration and Growth: A Dialogue Between Economists and Geographers
This introduction to the Journal of Economic Geographys special issue on agglomeration and growth describes recent developments in the interaction between economists and geographers and provides some contextual background to the discussion.
Technological Leadership, Human Capital and Economic Growth: A Spatial Econometric Analysis for U.S. Counties, 1969-2003
This paper uses exploratory and spatial econometric data analysis techniques to investigate role of space, technological leadership, human capital, increasing returns to scale and industrial clustering as well as hierarchical organization principles for U.S. counties using data from 1969 through 2003.
Division of Labor and the Rise of Cities: Evidence from U.S. Industrialization, 1850-1880
While it is extremely difficult to rule out other types of agglomeration economies such as spillovers, this paper suggests that these geographic developments associated with industrial revolution in the U.S. are most consistent with explanations based on division of labor, job search and matching costs.
Modelling Monetary Transmission in UK Manufacturing Industry
This paper studies the transmission of monetary policy to industrial output in the UK. Results show evidence of cross-sectional differences across industries and asymmetries in some sectors.