Which types of relatedness matter in regional growth? Industry, occupation and education

Abstract

This paper provides a conceptual discussion of relatedness, which suggests a focus on individuals as a complement to firms and industries. The empirical relevance of the main arguments are tested by estimating the effects of related and unrelated variety in education and occupation among employees, as well as in industries, on regional growth. The results show that occupational and educational related variety are positively correlated with productivity growth, which supports the conceptual discussion put forth in the paper. In addition, related variety in industries is found to be negative for productivity growth, but positive for employment growth.

What is smart rural development?

“…It is evident that the smart specialization concept has a strong focus on industrial structure. However, regarding knowledge spillovers, several papers criticize the use of industrial classifications to approximate relatedness, such as Brachert et al (2011), Desrochers and Lepp€ al€ a (2011), and Wixe and Andersson (2013). The latter argue theoretically and show empirically that relatedness on the individual level, e.g., in terms of education and occupation, is at least as important as relatedness in terms of industries.…”

Neighbourhood related diversity, human capital and firm innovation

“…However, as argued by, among others, Desrochers and Leppälä (), Brachert et al (), and Wixe and Andersson (), relatedness in terms of knowledge, skills and experiences of individuals may be at least as relevant as relatedness in terms of firms, products, or industries for knowledge spillovers and thus innovation. According to Wixe and Andersson (), this follows from the fact that both the matching and the learning mechanisms of agglomeration economies (cf. Duranton and Puga ), and thus knowledge spillovers, occur mostly at the level of individuals.…”

“…Despite the fact that theory predicts a positive relationship between related diversity and economic performance, previous research is rather inconclusive as to the effect of related diversity in industries on productivity and employment (cf. Frenken et al ; Bishop and Gripaios ; Brachert et al ; Boschma et al ; Mameli et al ; Wixe ; Wixe and Andersson ). Since innovation is related to changes in both productivity and employment, this may indicate that the expectation of the empirical relationship between related diversity in industries and the innovative performance of firms is tentative.…”

“…However, Brachert et al (), Desrochers and Leppälä () and Wixe and Andersson (), among others, argue that to capture externalities from diverse but complementary activities it may also be important to consider relatedness in terms of individuals' knowledge base, given by, for example, their educational background. Wixe and Andersson () argue that this is due to that learning and knowledge spillovers occur mostly at the level of individuals, and because of, for example, division of labour and functional specialization (Duranton and Puga ), educational relatedness may better reflect cognitive proximity at the individual level than industrial belonging. The present paper tests both propositions by exploring the relationship between related diversity in terms of employee education as well as related diversity in terms of industry belonging and the innovative performance of firms.…”

A regionális növekedés új tényezői az evolúciós gazdaságföldrajzi kutatásokban. A változatosság és a technológiai közelség

“…Brachert és szerzőtársai [2013] foglalkozási csoportok (K + f, fehérgalléros, kékgalléros) között tett különbséget, és németország munkaerő-vonzási körzeteiben azt találta, hogy a kapcsolódó változatosság pozitív hatása a foglalkoztatottság növe-kedésére elsősorban a tudásintenzív foglalkozási csoportokból (K + f, fehérgallé-ros) származott. Hasonló eredményre jutott Wixe-Andersson [2016] svédország régióiban. ágazati, foglalkozási és képzettségi osztályokban mért változatosság alapján azt találta, hogy a kapcsolódó ágazati változatosság pozitívan hatott a foglalkoztatottság növekedésére, és negatívan a termelékenységére.…”