Pierre-Alexandre Balland

Utrecht University | UU · Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning

Economic complexity offers a potentially powerful paradigm to understand key societal issues and challenges of our time. The underlying idea is that growth, development, technological change, income inequality, spatial disparities, and resilience are the visible outcomes of hidden systemic interactions. The study of economic complexity seeks to und...

Economic complexity offers a potentially powerful paradigm to understand key societal issues and challenges of our time. The underlying idea is that growth, development, technological change, income inequality, spatial disparities, and resilience are the visible outcomes of hidden systemic interactions. The study of economic complexity seeks to und...

It is widely acknowledged that new technological specialisations of regions are to a large extent driven by the recombination of existing knowledge and capabilities. Yet, little is known about the role of policy in this process. To address this, we analyse the relationship between the regional allocation of research grants and new technological spe...

As regions evolve, their economies become more complex, and they tend to diversify into related activities. Although there is a bright side to this diversification process in terms of economic development, there may also be a dark side to it, as it possibly contributes to regional inequalities. The paper uses data on industries and patents to analy...

Economies producing more complex products tend to be wealthier and grow more quickly. Therefore, a key issue for cities around the world is to develop new specialisations into more complex industries. In China, local governments tend to use urban land allocation as a tool to attract new firms from specific industries and promote industrial growth....

Do scientific capabilities in regions translate into technological leadership? This is one of the most pressing questions in academic and policy circles. This paper analyzes the matching of scientific and technological capabilities of 285 European regions. We build on patent and publication records to identify regions that lie both at the scientifi...

This paper aims to identify the future Industry 4.0 technology (I4T) centres of knowledge production in Europe. We expect I4Ts to thrive in regions where they can draw on local capabilities in I4T-related technologies. We use patent data to identify I4T-related technologies and find that I4Ts are positioned in the periphery of the knowledge space....

Regional capabilities are regarded a pillar of Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3). There is yet little focus in S3 policy on the role of interregional linkages. This study on 292 NUTS-2 regions in Europe finds that interregional linkages have a positive effect on the probability of regions to diversify, especially in peripheral regions. What matter...

Jobs disappear, jobs are created, work changes, in a geographically uneven way. Some places cope better with adverse events that threaten its labour force into unemployment. Some places end up having better jobs. Why? Labour dynamics are particular of each place, influenced by a myriad of local factors, such as the type of jobs in each city. But jo...

Human activities, such as research, innovation and industry, concentrate disproportionately in large cities. The ten most innovative cities in the United States account for 23% of the national population, but for 48% of its patents and 33% of its gross domestic product. But why has human activity become increasingly concentrated? Here we use data o...

A key objective of the EU Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation is the creation of cross-country research networks. We make use of Social Network tools to describe the evolution of the EU research network across countries on the basis of unique data covering collaborative projects launched during the first four years of implementation of...

We investigate the micro-connectivity drivers of network change in an underperforming industrial cluster in Argentina. Our analysis is based on data collected in two consecutive surveys, conducted in 2005 and 2012, of entrepreneurs in the electronics cluster in Córdoba. We find that social and institutional factors influence micro-connectivity choi...

There is ample evidence of regions diversifying in new occupations that are related to pre-existing activities in the region. However, it is still poorly understood through which mechanisms related diversification operates. To unpack relatedness, we distinguish between three mechanisms: complementarity (interdependent tasks), similarity (sharing si...

The idea that skills, technology, and knowledge, are spatially concentrated, has a long academic tradition. Yet, only recently this hypothesis has been empirically formalized and corroborated at multiple spatial scales, for different economic activities, and for a diversity of institutional regimes. The new synthesis is an empirical principle descr...

Why do some economic activities agglomerate more than others? And, why does the agglomeration of some economic activities continue to increase despite recent developments in communication and transportation technologies? In this paper, we present evidence that complex economic activities concentrate more in large cities. We find this to be true for...

We have become aware that we omitted to cite the work of Feldman, M.P., Audretsch, D.B., 1999. in the fifth paragraph. Now the missing reference has been included in the chapter.

There is ample evidence of regions diversifying in new occupations that are related to pre-existing activities in the region. However, it is still poorly understood through which mechanisms related diversification operates. To unpack relatedness, we distinguish between three mechanisms: complementarity (interdependent tasks), similarity (sharing si...

The operationalization of smart specialization policy has been rather limited because a coherent set of analytical tools to guide the policy directives remains elusive. We propose a policy framework around the concepts of relatedness and knowledge complexity. We show that diversifying into more complex technologies is attractive but difficult for E...

Despite being the main thriving force behind economic growth and industrial development, technological innovation remains highly concentrated on a handful of countries. It is therefore of a great interest to know how countries accumulate and develop their innovative capabilities, what kind of obstacles they need to overcome, and whether it is possi...

Do different types of relatedness have different influence in the employment structure renewal?

In this paper, we analyze the geography of knowledge spillovers in biotech by investigating the way in which knowledge ties are organized. Following a relational account on knowledge spillovers, we depict knowledge networks as complex evolving structures that build on pre-existing knowledge and previously formed ties. In economic geography, there i...

Despite theoretical and empirical advances, the proximity framework has remained essentially static. We propose a dynamic extension of the proximity framework in which we account for co-evolutionary dynamics between knowledge networking and proximity. For each proximity dimension, we describe how proximities might increase over time as a result of...

This article investigates by means of US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent data whether technological relatedness at the city level was a crucial driving force behind technological change in 366 US cities from 1981 to 2010. Based on a three-way fixed-effects model, we find that the entry probability of a new technology in a city increases...

The concentration and dispersion of innovative activities in space have been largely evidenced by the nature of knowledge and the geographical extent of knowledge spillovers. One of the empirical challenges is to go beyond this by understanding how the geography of innovation is shaped by particular structural properties of R&D collaboration networ...

In this paper, we study the formation of network ties between firms along the life cycle of a creative industry. We focus on three drivers of network formation: i) network endogeneity which stresses a path-dependent change originating from previous network structures, ii) five forms of proximity (e.g. geographical proximity) which ascribe tie forma...

BALLAND P.-A. Proximity and the evolution of collaboration networks: evidence from research and development projects within the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) industry, Regional Studies. This paper analyses the influence of proximity on the evolution of collaboration networks. It determines empirically how organizations choose their part...

The concentration and dispersion of innovative activities in space have been largely explained and evidenced by the nature of knowledge and the geographical extent of knowledge spillovers. One of the empirical challenges is to go beyond this by understanding how the geography of innovation is shaped by particular structural properties of knowledge...

The concentration and dispersion of innovative activities in space has been largely explained and evidenced by the nature of knowledge and the geographical extent of knowledge spillovers. One of the empirical challenges is to go beyond by understanding how the geography of innovation is shaped by particular structural properties of knowledge networ...

This paper contributes to the empirical identification of geographical and structural properties of innovative networks, focusing on the particular case of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) at the European level. We show that knowledge bases of organizations and knowledge phases of the innovation process are the critical factors in determi...

This paper contributes to the empirical identification of geographical and structural properties of innovative networks, focusing on the particular case of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) at the European level. We show that knowledge bases of organizations and knowledge phases of the innovation process are the critical factors in determi...

Increasing attention had been given recently to understand how networks affect organizational performance in innovation studies. Surprisingly, underlying mechanisms of their evolution have been more neglected, and still remain unclear. This lack of interest is denounced today by recent papers which claim that it is a crucial issue for economic geog...

This paper contributes to the empirical identification of clusters based on network analysis. We start with the detection of a composite knowledge process rather than a territorial one stricto sensu. Networks and clusters correspond to the complex aggregation process of bi or n-lateral relations in which agents can play heterogeneous structural rol...

This paper aims to contribute to the empirical identification of clusters by proposing methodological issues based on network analysis. We start with the detection of a composite knowledge process rather than a territorial one stricto sensu. Such a consideration allows us to avoid the overestimation of the role played by geographical proximity betw...