Robert Hassink

Kiel University | CAU · Department of Geography

The shift of manufacturing industry from Japan, the first industrializing nation in East Asia, to neighboring South Korea and China saw the emergence of restructuring problems and policies in traditional industries and regional economies depending on them. Based on a literature review on this topic in East Asia, this paper draws three conclusions....

The aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding of long-term uneven resilience by critically exploring the notion of adaptation and adaptability. Moving beyond the conventional trade-off assumption, the paper proposes three main types of adaptation-adaptability relationships, namely competing, separated and reciprocal, as an analytical a...

Most of the currently debated theoretical concepts in economic geography stress the positive effects of geographical clustering of industries on innovation and growth. Comparing two pairs of regional economies in Germany and South Korea specialized in textile and shipbuilding industry, this paper shows that the geographical clustering of industries...

One of the most intriguing questions in economic geography is why it is that some regional economies manage to renew themselves, whereas others remain locked in decline. In addition to evolutionary concepts, the idea of resilience is derived from ecology, psychology and disaster studies to tackle this question. After a strong critique of the region...

Book Review: Variegated Economies

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...

According to some economic geographers, modern economic geography has been increasingly fragmented over the last twenty years, concerning both its themes and its paradigms. However, so far, no bibliometric analysis has been carried out to quantitatively measure the degree of fragmentation in economic geography concerning paradigms. In this paper, w...

Combinatorial knowledge dynamics and recombinant innovation have received increasing attention. So far, however, empirical studies have insufficiently focused on how firms utilize multi-scalar sources to facilitate the combination of analytical and synthetic knowledge, which is a gap we would like to fill with the help of this paper. Through interv...

Although evolutionary economic geography has been popular in economic geography, it has also been criticized for, among others, a weak geographical conceptualization, which has become evident, particularly in empirical research on related and unrelated variety. Therefore, this paper advances a spatial ontology, which is embedded in critical realism...

Catch-up phenomena have been studied intensively in many manufacturing industries, but they have not been well explored in creative industries. Moreover, the internal heterogeneity of different segments within a specific industry has also largely been overlooked in the catch-up literature. This paper fills these gaps by analyzing the catch-up of a...

The actions of platforms and their all-inclusive impact on place development is coined platform-based place making in this article. We use the actor-network theory to analyse a typical e-commerce platform-based place making, namely the emergence, development and upgrading of Taobao villages in China, and to explore the mechanisms of platform place...

This article aims to explain the role of regional innovation policies in regional industrial transformation (RIT) from a coevolutionary perspective. The empirical basis is the case study of Małopolska, a Polish region undergoing an industrial transformation in parallel with the launch and development of its innovation policies after the EU accessio...

Standing at a crossroads, where ongoing 'slowbalisation' coincides with new forces such as the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, heightened geopolitical tensions, the emergence of disruptive technologies and the increasing urgency of addressing environmental challenges, many important questions remain unsolved regarding the nature and impact of th...

For regions that are deeply integrated into the global economy, the question of how to remain competitive and resilient in times of uncertainty is a key concern. While strategic coupling is a useful concept for understanding local-global economic dynamics, the idea that a region can simultaneously couple into multiple production networks organised...

Economic geographers have studied emerging industries in regions from various perspectives, such as lifecycle, evolutionary economic geography, and systemic approaches. However, so far, they have insufficiently conceptualized the effects of institutional structures on new industry emergence. This special issue on "Emerging industries: institutions,...

Recently, challenge-oriented innovation policy has become increasingly popular in political and scientific discussions. However, the extent to which such a challenge-based thinking has entered regional policy making is relatively unclear. This paper examines the scope of the regional level in promoting challenge-based innovation, focusing on the re...

Former) old industrial regions are a specific kind of lagging regions that suffer from long-term restructuring problems and deindustrialization. They are back in the focus of many researchers as well as media observers, because of the rise of populist parties in many of these regions in North America and Europe. Therefore, new policy options are di...

This article focuses on one of China’s emerging creative clusters – Hangzhou’s mobile game industry – and investigates the various adaptations this cluster has undergone, as well as the mechanisms underlying the industrial and geographical dynamics within the cluster. Specifically, it examines the power asymmetry of governance in the cluster, payin...

The question of how regions can remain competitive and resilient in times of uncertainty is a central concern for economic geographers. To date, two key concepts-strategic coupling and regional economic resilience-have been used separately to study regional economic dynamics in times of uncertainty. Through a careful examination of the industrial c...

The literature on local and regional industrial development in economic geography and innovation studies has increasingly moved from an endogenously focused perspective to a perspective highlighting extra-regional linkages of local actors. While the significance of external resources and actors for local industry development has increasingly become...

Due to a spatial turn in the socio-technical transition literature, the geography of energy transitions has recently been taken increasingly seriously, leading to burgeoning research output on regional energy transitions since early 2010. Amidst this wealth of publications, however, it can be difficult to keep track of its diverse and constantly ev...

Recently the knowledge base (KB) concept has been extended with combinational knowledge bases (CKB) in order to overcome the dichotomy between analytical, synthetic and symbolic KB. So far, however, empirical studies on these CKB have insufficiently focused on multi-scalar mechanisms, which is a gap we would like to fill with the help of this paper...

This conceptual paper aims to theorize about cluster repositioning from a global production network and strategic coupling perspective. As such, strategic coupling focuses on regional economic development by analyzing the matches and mismatches between regional assets, on the one hand, and the needs of the transnational corporations that steer glob...

The Małopolska region in southern Poland has a long tradition of mature and heavy industries, but more recently also new, unrelated industries have been emerging in this region, such as knowledge intensive business services. At the same time, innovation policies have been decentralizing over the last 20 years in Poland and in the Małopolska region,...

This article discusses the geography of the emergence of online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms in China. Moving beyond conventional approaches in financial geography, we propose a new analytical framework drawing on evolutionary economic geography. We find that China's P2P industry is highly concentrated in Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hangzh...

The aim of this study is to compare the European and Chinese approaches to regional innovation carrying out a comparative analysis at a general level and also analysing three best practices of regions/provinces in China and the EU. It seeks to explore ideas for future cooperation between the European Union and China on regional innovation systems.

Drawing upon critical realism and the literature on theorising in social sciences, this article contributes to the understanding of theorising in economic geography by highlighting the role of context throughout the theory development process. By critically reviewing two key concepts in economic geography—related variety and knowledge bases—from a...

In spite of our current understanding of Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) design and implementation, an understanding of interrelated governance practices aimed at addressing S3 governance issues is lacking. Applying a data-triangulation approach to a large peripheral Finnish region (Lapland), the analysis suggests that S3 implementation faces tw...

The notion of resilience to analyse how fast systems recover from shocks has been increasingly taken up in economic geography, in which there is a burgeoning literature on regional resilience. Regional resilience is a place‐sensitive, multi‐layered and multi‐scalar, conflict‐ridden and highly contingent process. The nature of shocks is one importan...

In his recent article, Andy Pike (2020a Pike, A. (2020a). Coping with deindustrialization in the global North and South. International Journal of Urban Sciences, 1–22. doi: 10.1080/12265934.2020.1730225[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) rightly asks for the need for theorizing on deindustrialization not only in the Gl...

老工业区重构是经济地理学的重要研究议题。在全球化步伐放缓和全球制造业下行的 宏观背景下，老工业区已愈来愈成为各国发展战略制定的核心对象。对近十年有关老工业区重构的中外文献进行细致梳理，指出了当下研究存在范式应用多元化的趋势，但这些范式在概 念使用、尺度聚焦、时空侧重和机制解释上存在显著差异，缺乏相互融合和优势互补，面临现实 应用瓶颈。特别是，长期用于解释老工业区重构的演化经济地理学，因其忽视多尺度-多主体多分析单元的能动性作用而难以有效解释重构过程、机制、结果及其背后的地理性。本文将转 型研究中的多层次视角同演化范式相结合，提供了一种具备上下因果辩证解释力的多尺度分 析框架，能有效解释老工业区重构问题。在此基础上，探讨了未来研究方向。

老工业区重构是经济地理学的重要研究议题。在全球化步伐放缓和全球制造业下行的宏观背景下，老工业区已愈来愈成为各国发展战略制定的核心对象。对近十年有关老工业区重构的中外文献进行细致梳理，指出了当下研究存在范式应用多元化的趋势，但这些范式在概念使用、尺度聚焦、时空侧重和机制解释上存在显著差异，缺乏相互融合和优势互补，面临现实应用瓶颈。特别是，长期用于解释老工业区重构的演化经济地理学，因其忽视多尺度-多主体-多分析单元的能动性作用而难以有效解释重构过程、机制、结果及其背后的地理性。本文将转型研究中的多层次视角同演化范式相结合，提供了一种具备上下因果辩证解释力的多尺度分析框架，能有效解释老工业区重构问题。在此基础上，探讨了未来研究方向。

Subnationale Innovationssysteme, allen voran regionale Innovationssysteme, haben nicht nur einen festen Platz als Mitglied in der konzeptionellen Familie der territorialen Innovationsmodelle eingenommen, sie gelten auch als wichtige theoretische Grundlage für regionale Innovationspolitik. In diesem konzeptionellen Beitrag werden sie kritisch gewürd...

The topic of new regional industrial path development has recently received increasing attention in economic geography. The core idea is that actors in a specific region mobilize both intra-regional and extra-regional resources, especially knowledge, to develop a new regional industrial path. However, the extant literature has not yet fully explore...

Although place-based regional innovation policies have been favoured during some time over spatially blind policies, recently doubts have been expressed about their effectiveness, particularly in lagging regions where populism has been risen. In order to overcome part of these problems, I argue in this chapter that place has to be taken more seriou...

Moving beyond regional description by focusing on decontextualization and strengthening the explanatory power of theories in economic geography is a key undertaking. Therefore, the analysis of underlying processes and causal mechanisms is useful, but too often process and mechanism are conflated, as has been convincingly argued by Yeung (2019) in h...

The notion of resilience, derived from ecology, psychology and disaster studies, to analyse how fast systems recover from shocks and what kind of capabilities prevent vulnerability to future disturbances, have been increasingly taken up in human geography. Sub-categories of resilience studies in human geography include social resilience, community...

During the last five years, we can observe a soaring academic interest in the concept of smart specialization. A burgeoning literature emerged both conceptually and empirically. In this paper, we pause for a while and take stock of six critiques so far identified in this emerging literature. The aim is to provide a critical lens for future research...

The topic of new regional industrial path development has recently received increasing attention in economic geography. The core idea is that actors in a specific region mobilize both intra-regional and extra-regional resources, especially knowledge, to develop a new regional industrial path. However, the extant literature has not yet fully explore...

In recent years, regional resilience has become a fashion mainly used to understand how regional economies recover after ‘sudden’ shocks. However, little attention has been paid to how regions adapt to a ‘slow-burn’ crisis in a long-term perspective, and why they adapt differently. Moreover, the notion of resilience has suffered from conceptual fuz...

In recent decades, while place-based policies and local development have attracted the interest of institutional economic geography, the issue of features of certain industries and how they are shaping and shaped by institutions at multiple spatial scales, has not been taken up sufficiently. This article, based on a local creative industry-the Shan...

New economic geography is a term used in two ways in the international literature. First, and foremost, it is used as the work done by Paul Krugman and other economists, who developed abstract models to explain spatial concentration and specializations leading to persistent regional economic disparities. Their main contribution has been to put geog...

New economic geography is a term used in two ways in the international literature. First, and foremost, it is used to refer to the work done by Paul Krugman and other economists, who developed abstract models to explain spatial concentration and specializations leading to persistent regional economic disparities. Their main contribution has been to...

Path creation is a key concept in economic geography. So far, particularly scholars within evolutionary economic geography have pioneered research on this topic. In this paper, we critically discuss their work and propose a broader understanding of how new economic activities emerge in regions, which we refer to as new regional industrial path deve...

Path creation is a key concept in economic geography. So far, particularly scholars within evolutionary economic geography have pioneered research on this topic. This paper critically discusses their work and proposes a broader understanding of how new economic activities emerge in regions, which is referred to here as ‘new regional industrial path...

Regional resilience has been criticized in the literature for being fuzzy. Based on that criticism one could expect it to suffer from conceptual stretching, that is that authors mean different things when they write about regional resilience. In this paper for the first time, a bibliometric analysis is presented to tackle the issue of fuzziness and...

Although co-evolution is a key concept in contemporary economic geography because of its relevance for achieving deep contextualization and sound policy recommendations, it has not been taken up in recent empirical work largely. This is partly due to the lacking of a comprehensive theoretical framework. In this paper, we therefore develop such a fr...

Over the last fifteen years, we have been observing an increasing fragmentation of economic geography, concerning both schools of thought, perspectives, paradigms, themes and the educational background of researchers. The poly-vocal character of economic geography includes a variety of language areas, a phenomenon so far unknown to a large part of...

In the past two decades, the number of international film festivals strongly increased. As a research topic, however, these festivals have received little attention within economic geography and regional studies. The aim of this comparative paper is to explore the institutional history and impact on local economic development of two international f...

Regional economic adaptability is a classical topic in economic geography. Studying the fall and necessary restructuring and adaptability of regional economies has a long tradition in Europe, whereas the non-Western world is a blind spot particularly concerning the use of newer evolutionary theoretical concepts in analysing and explaining regional...

Pokémon Go, a highly popular, recently launched augmented-reality-based video game, fosters players' interaction with the real world. In this commentary we elaborate on how location-based games, such as Pokémon Go, have provided insights into the perception and understanding of space, as well as into their impact on patterns of mobility. In additio...

One-size-fits-all cluster policies have been rightly criticized in the literature. One promising approach is to focus cluster policies on the specific needs of firms depending on the stage of development (emergence, growth, sustainment or decline) their cluster is in. In this highly insightful book, these stage-specific cluster policies are analyse...

During the last decades, a large body of literature has been published on the clustering of creative industries, but it has not been reviewed in a systematic way. In this review paper, we fill this gap. The review leads to the identification of several deficiencies of current research. Based on that, we distil avenues for future empirical research...

The restructuring of old industrial areas has been receiving much attention in regional development studies both in industrialized and emerging economies. Although ample Chinese-speaking studies have been published on the topic, most of them suffer from paying too little attention to dynamic multi-scalar interactions between firms, institutions, po...

Regional economic adaptability is a classical topic in economic geography. Studying the fall and necessary restructuring and adaptability of regional economies has a long tradition in Europe, whereas the non-Western world is a blind spot particularly concerning the use of newer evolutionary theoretical concepts in analysing and explaining regional...

Abstract: Although the role of the local state in China's regional development has been regarded as important, individual local state actors and their relation with institutional change have been under-explored. Critically exploring the Western idea of place leadership, this paper launches the notion of local state leadership as a specific Chinese...

Of the few theoretical concepts that try to explain the decline of clusters, the political lock-in concept is promising, because it stresses the importance of history and institutional context. Political lock-ins can be considered as thick institutional tissues aiming at preserving existing industrial structures in clusters and therefore unnecessar...

Strengthening innovation capacity of European small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by means of their participation in the Sixth (FP6-SME) and Seventh (FP7-SME) Framework Programmes was an important objective of the European Union policies. Since SMEs form the backbone of the Italian economy, their strong presence in an international network such as...

Theoretical economic geography concepts have recently become increasingly popular in tourism studies. One of the reasons is the increasing importance of innovation and evolution in the tourism sector, areas that have been theorized much earlier in economic geography. In this chapter we contribute to this emerging literature by focusing on two key n...

Although regional resilience has come into fashion to understand how regional economies recover after shocks, it has suffered from dualistic thinking, which undermines its explanatory power. This article addresses this problem by developing a conceptual framework of uneven resilience of regions in a long-term perspective, on the basis of a comparat...

The spatially uneven adaptation and adaptability of old industrial areas has become one of the most intriguing issues in the field of economic geography in the post-­‐crisis era. This chapter contributes to a conceptual inspiration by synthesizing multi-­‐dimensioned impact factors and their characteristics on the adaptability of old industrial are...

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/jZyN2d5GIFVAQsA8AP7d/full

This handbook provides a comprehensive global survey of the politics of technology. Written by an outstanding line-up of distinguished scholars in the field, the handbook covers all aspects of the relationship between politics and technology including: • demand and support for new technologies and innovation by the state; • the effects of technolog...