Firm-level knowledge accumulation and regional dynamics

Two bodies of literature have contributed significantly to our insight into the forces driving competitiveness and economic growth. Regional agglomeration studies emphasise the favourable impact of geographical proximity on regional economic performance, particularly through knowledge spillovers. However, the firms that constitute those agglomerations largely remain black boxes. In contrast, studies dealing with technological learning explain economic performance at firm level without systematically taking account of the effects of geographical proximity. The aim of the paper is to propose a possible way to bridge this gap. This contributes to our understanding of the determinants of economic growth in industrial clusters. An empirical illustration of a capital goods cluster is elaborated