Maximilian BennerUniversity of Vienna | UniWien · Institut für Geographie und Regionalforschung
Maximilian Benner
PD Dr.
Senior scientist working on green, just, and inclusive regional futures
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54
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Introduction
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February 2019 - December 2019
Publications
Publications (54)
Scholarly work in economic geography and regional science has recently seen a renewed interest in spatial inequalities, driven significantly by the debate on left-behind places and the resulting geographies of discontent. The plight of left-behind places calls for new place-based policy responses that address the specific challenges of these region...
Zusammenfassung
Unsere Zeit ist geprägt von multiplen Krisen wie dem Klimawandel, Pandemien, geopolitischen Unsicherheiten sowie der Zunahme sozialer und territorialer Ungleichheiten. Diese und andere große gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen machen einen umfassenden transformativen Wandel, also maßgebliche Umstellungen unserer Produktions- und Kon...
The path development approach has advanced our understanding of the conditions and consequences of spatial evolution. However, in line with evolutionary economic geography at large, the path development literature has focussed primarily on economic growth and much less on the inclusion of disadvantaged groups. Drawing on evolutionary economic geogr...
The literature on spatial evolution has taken a high interest in structure-agency dynamics, but how long-term discourse interacts with these dynamics in shaping new paths still lacks a systematic understanding. To advance such an understanding, this article draws on the agency, structure, institutions and discourse (ASID) framework and refocuses it...
The legitimation of new regional industrial paths has become a crucial issue in path development since it touches the institutional foundations of spatial evolution and fits the recent interest in agency. Neo-institutional sociology offers a wealth of insights for how agents build legitimacy. In particular, the institutional logics perspective sugg...
In the path development literature, how agents shape innovation systems has attracted growing interest. However, the concept of such system-level agency suffers from an unclear distinction from other levels of agency, underdeveloped links to other agency concepts, vagueness about the conceptualization of a multidimensional innovation system and the...
South East European countries are pursuing their way towards EU accession which involves the adoption of EU laws, standards, and policy approaches. This process of policy alignment faces a local institutional environment marked by existing institutional asymmetries between formal and informal institutions, often based on institutional voids. In thi...
The smart specialization approach has guided regional innovation policies in Europe for roughly a decade. However, the policy practice under the approach has met considerable criticism which suggests the existence of significant gaps between the conceptual level and the level of policy implementation. To explain and understand the reasons for these...
Rising market power across the OECD countries raises the question how industrial policies address the role of competition, including on the regional level. Based on a multifaceted understanding of competition and cooperation between firms in the conceptual literature, this article examines the role of competition-enhancing interventions in regional...
In recent years, regional innovation policies across Europe have relied on the smart specialisation approach to support new path development. However, its focus on endogenous knowledge flows remains a major weakness of the approach. This article argues that smart specialisation has to adopt an outward-looking approach that combines knowledge flows...
In the literature on regional industrial path development, the path-as-process perspective conceptualizes the emergence, evolution, transformation, and decline of regional industries in the long term. However, critical questions about the role of agency in path development and transformation remain open, partly due to a frequent empirical focus on...
Institutional change in regional economies is affected by multiscalar developments such as alignment with the EU and its markets. In countries in the EU’s Eastern and Southern neighborhood, processes of alignment and mutual market liberalization shape the supranational conditions for regional development but do so in variegated ways. Policy alignme...
Innovation policy is embedded in local contexts that shape its courses and outcomes. However, the role of context is often neglected in the design and implementation of innovation policies. Critical questions such as what innovation actually means, what kind of innovation policies may be beneficial in a given country and for specific sectors, regio...
Evolutionary economic geography has sought to understand the development of regional industrial pathways but tended to neglect both the multiscalarity of economic development and the role of institutional change. The concept of coevolution seeks to bridge this gap but is still too vague for empirical application. Understanding the interactions betw...
In recent decades, regional development has seen a wave of collective policy-making processes such as the European smart specialization approach or participatory approaches to tourism strategy formulation. These processes are confronted by several challenges based on behavioural patterns related to human agency. This paper conceptualizes collective...
In response to the article ‘Six critical questions about smart specialization’ and Dominique Foray’s reply to that article, this paper identifies several more questions to be asked about the smart specialization approach and its implementation under EU cohesion policy in recent years. The paper argues that in addition to the critical points identif...
The term overtourism has generated considerable attention both in academic discourse and public debate. The actual or perceived impact of overtourism on destinations has significant ecological, social, and cultural consequences. However, a crucial question remains unanswered: What does overtourism do to a destination’s tourism industry itself? At t...
Contemporary economic geography acknowledges that regional economies develop in evolutionary processes, and that institutions matter in this process. Evolutionary dynamics have been classified into five types of path development (path extension, path branching, path diversification, path creation, path importation, and path upgrading) that serve to...
Enhancing the innovation potential has been on the policy agenda of the Western Balkan economies for years. Hence, innovation policy-making has led to a number of policy documents and strategies that relate to economic and innovative competitiveness. The concept of smart specialisation is a newer approach of innovation policy that seeks to develop...
The six Western Balkan economies are facing similar challenges and opportunities in upgrading their tourism sectors. Currently, all six economies are preparing the design and implementation of smart specialization strategies, thus adapting an approach known from EU cohesion policy to their needs. Montenegro is the first country in the Western Balka...
A number of European tourist destinations have become the subject of a public debate on overtourism. The present article argues that problems discussed under the overtourism debate cannot be solved by limiting tourist numbers alone. Rather, the article calls for multidimensional strategies that build on a vision of qualitative tourism development s...
Recent years have witnessed much experimentation with smart specialization strategies (RIS3) and entrepreneurial discovery processes (EDPs) in European regions. The EDP can be seen as an opportunity to address institutional questions. Because institutional patterns can explain why some policies are eventually successful while others are not, lookin...
Newer approaches of industrial policy that focus on catalytic and facilitating interventions of government have become a rivalling model to neoclassical laissez-faire approaches. Inspired by the success stories of East Asian newly industrialised economies (NIEs), newer approaches advocate a more experimental policy stance. Newer industrial policies...
In the European Union and its neighborhood, regional development has increasingly come to focus on agglomerations during the last three decades. Notably, during the 1990s and early 2000s, clustering was the major policy focus in regional development. Currently, the concept of smart specialization is applied all over the European Union and is attrac...
![Figure 3. Research framework (Adapted from [4]).](publication/283447211/figure/fig2/AS:668933254307854@1536497524681/Research-framework-Adapted-from-4_Q320.jpg)
The business environment in transition countries is often extraordinarily challenging for companies. The transition process these countries find themselves in leads to constant changes in the institutional environment. Hence, institutional voids prevail. These institutional voids cause competitive disadvantages for small and medium enterprises. Clu...
The idea of smart specialisation has gained high prominence in the discourse about the regional policy of the European Union (EU). In the coming program period from 2014 to 2020 it is expected to be a major pillar of EU structural funds. The notion of smart specialisation incorporates some basic principles of evolutionary economics and centers on t...
Cluster policy has become a method of choice for policymakers in many countries. Promoting strong localized industries is an appealing perspective for practitioners, as it can be seen as a way to anchor economic activity in regions in an era of globalization. If cluster policy is successful, it can contribute to the creation of employment and to th...
Underlying Greece's public debt crisis is a fundamental economic problem: its lack of international competitiveness. While in the short term the debt crisis must be solved, in the long term the economic perspective of the country will depend on whether it will succeed in developing competitive industries. Reducing costs by lowering wages in case Gr...
Export-led growth has gained considerable prominence as a model for economic development since its use by East Asian newly industrializing countries. Thus, the question of how it can be used by other countries wishing to industrialize and under what circumstances it can lead to the take-off of an economy is highly relevant for development policy. I...
Using a strategy of export-led growth and an activist industrial policy, Japan, the Asian Tigers and more recently China have attained high rates of economic growth. Export-led growth has taken over the status as model for developing countries' economic development from the formerly prevailing paradigm of import substitution. This paper reviews the...
The development of Abu Dhabi and Dubai during past years seems breathtaking. Both emirates pursue a strategy of diversifying their economic structure and thus of becoming less dependent on oil and gas. The obvious goal is to secure their prosperity for an era beyond oil. Diversification is a relevant strategic imperative for other resource-rich dev...
Recent political transformations in Arab countries suggest that solutions have to be found for the problem of lacking economic prospects and particularly of high youth unemployment. Such solutions have to consist of economic growth that unfolds widespread employment effects. A tourism policy that opens up perspectives for employment to people in ma...
Questions
Questions (3)
Dear Colleagues,
Economic policy in the European Union's Eastern and Southern neighborhood is embedded in the frameworks offered by EU's enlargement and neighborhood policies. Under these frameworks, regional development and policy play a significant role, as is evident in the current introduction of the smart specialization approach to regional innovation policy in the Western Balkans, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, and Tunisia. Further approaches of regional development relevant to EU enlargement and neighborhood countries include the LEADER/CLLD approach, and building capacities in organizations such as regional development agencies according to experiences made in EU member states represents an important complement for the introduction of policy approaches. In this context, the special issue seeks contributions that deal with aspects of regional analysis, policy approaches, and institutional or organizational questions in EU enlargement or neighborhood countries and their regions.
Dr. Maximilian Benner
Guest Editor
Please find the complete call here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/economies/special_issues/regional_policy
Dear Colleagues,
Economic policy in the European Union's Eastern and Southern neighborhood is embedded in the frameworks offered by EU's enlargement and neighborhood policies. Under these frameworks, regional development and policy play a significant role, as is evident in the current introduction of the smart specialization approach to regional innovation policy in the Western Balkans, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, and Tunisia. Further approaches of regional development relevant to EU enlargement and neighborhood countries include the LEADER/CLLD approach, and building capacities in organizations such as regional development agencies according to experiences made in EU member states represents an important complement for the introduction of policy approaches. In this context, the special issue seeks contributions that deal with aspects of regional analysis, policy approaches, and institutional or organizational questions in EU enlargement or neighborhood countries and their regions.
Dr. Maximilian Benner
Guest Editor
Please find the complete call here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/economies/special_issues/regional_policy
Dear colleagues,
I would be curious if you know any successful examples of business incubators, maybe even case studies? It seems to me that while incubators are very widespread, objectively successful cases are fairly rare and under-researched. If you know about any hard evidence (!) on the real economic impact of incubators that have been shown to work well, please do share it.
Thank you.
