The literature about regional innovation systems, clusters and industrial districts insists on the importance of local knowledge spillovers. Nevertheless, more recently a few authors have put in question the importance of local knowledge spillovers. This paper provides an analysis of some of the most dynamic aerospace clusters in the world, located in Montreal, Seattle, Toulouse and Toronto. We start by discussing theories of clustering, then provide research questions as well as empirical evidence on the international nature of knowledge spillovers. Local knowledge spillovers are less significant, of a different nature, and they may make a scanty contribution to explain the geographical agglomeration of firms. Conversely, international spillovers help to explain the relative dispersion of industry across nations. Resilient geographical clustering is related to the anchor tenant effects as creators of labour pools and owners of very large manufacturing plants creating regional inertia. We thus reject the local knowledge spillover explanation of aerospace clusters in favour of another one based on anchor firms and their effects on the local labour pool.Aerospace, aircraft, industrial clusters, industrial districts, internationalization, regional innovation systems,

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China and India are emerging as major entrants into the international software industry. Both are rapidly learning through outsourcing with multinational enterprises (MNEs) from advanced nations, yet their paths to this dynamic sector are very different. Chinese software firms have focused on their domestic market by working with foreign MNEs, while they move cautiously abroad. Indian firms, which are already large, continue to expand overseas as well as to climb the value chain. Different approaches to MNEs provide useful perspectives. At the same time, the innovation systems approach is necessary to explain the foundations of the industry. The article provides hypotheses and tests them. It concludes that learning internationalization processes are different in Chinese and Indian MNEs, and provides explanations for the different patterns.