Prerequisites and initial developments for economic specialization in lagging regions—A study of specialized villages in Iran

Abstract

Although the literature provides a huge number of studies on specialized regions, such as clusters and industrial districts, most of them concern developed regions. Studies that focus on the initial processes and preconditions for the emergence of economic specialization in lagging regions are rare, and studies of this kind considering a large number of cases not existing. We use the information on 140 villages in lagging rural regions in Iran to examine the initializing processes and preconditions as well as the connection between the two. We find that the conditions that are present in the region affect the potential initial processes and developments that might lead to specialization. Thus, the findings support the application of place-based policies.

Policy options for lagging regions—effects, new approaches and emerging challenges: introduction to the special issue

“…From a scientific perspective, it requires either to distinguish types of regions in statistical effect analyses or to do in-depth case studies and bring the findings of many such studies together. Three papers in this issue (Hassink and Kiese 2021;Furková 2021;Ghorbani and Brenner 2021) contribute to this as well as an increasing number of papers in the literature. However, regions and their preconditions differ strongly and many more studies of this kind are needed to fill all the gaps in our understanding.…”

“…This is done in the paper by Furková (2021), who analyses heterogeneous effects of R&D inputs on innovation performance of lagging and more prosperous regions and also find strong differences. The paper by Ghorbani and Brenner (2021) does not examine the effects of policies, but analyses the successful development in rural regions that had been lagging before. Their results also point to regional differences that lead to different potential developments and, hence, different policy options.…”