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This chapter applies the five drivers of productivity framework to regional microdata for Egypt and extends it by introducing an index of industrial clusters as an explanatory factor of the productivity performance of local private sector firms. Applying structural equation models, the geographic concentration of sectoral economic activity is found to have a positive and statistically significant effect on labor productivity. The transmission mechanism is conjectured to be the positive spillovers that are created, which local firms can tap into. In contrast, a higher concentration of skilled workers in an industrial sector in a region is associated with lower levels of labor productivity – a finding that suggests there may be structural deficiencies in the allocation of skilled workers. Regional policy should focus on net investments in gross capital formation throughout the country, for which the national and regional governments should improve how public investments are managed and the institutional framework – including the rule of law, bureaucracy and red tape, conflict of interest, transparency, and governance – so that private investment (both local and foreign) may substantially increase.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the twin transition in China in the organization of innovation processes in artificial intelligence (AI) and green technology (GT) development and to understand the role of foreign multinationals in Chinese innovation systems.

A qualitative research approach is used by interviewing executives from German multinationals with expertise in AI and GT development and organization of innovation processes in China. In total, 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with companies, and the data were analysed with a thematic qualitative text analysis.

The findings show that AI applications for GT are primarily developed in cross-company projects that are led by local and regional authorities through the organization of industrial districts and clusters. German multinationals are either being integrated, remaining autonomous or being excluded from these twin transition innovation processes.

This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature by providing one of the first qualitative approach towards twin transition innovation processes in China and exploring the integration of multinational enterprises in cluster organizations. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the first twin transition studies from this perspective in emerging economies.

Given the surge in foreign direct investment (FDI) in emerging economies (EEs) during the past four decades, inward FDI (IFDI) has spawned a rich, scholarly conversation on the topic. This paper aims to review the literature regarding EE IFDI determinants and the impact of IFDI on those economies. It also aims to provide some future research directions.

A systematic review with thematic analysis of 372 articles on the topic, published between 1991 and 2021, is undertaken. In addition to using the relevant keywords, the snowballing approach was used to manually track the literature.

This review highlights EE IFDI determinants such as institutional quality, corruption and intellectual property rights, regional trade agreements and distances, formal and informal institutions and their interactions, national and subnational diversity and policy expectations. Further, IFDI impacts EEs both at macro- and micro-levels. This review also indicates a substantial increase in research during the period 2000 to 2010 and a decline thereafter; it also indicates Africa and Latin America being under-researched, with a focus on Africa recently increasing.

Rich research opportunities exist in examining the mechanisms (mediators) and conditions (moderators) that influence relationships between the antecedents of IFDI and their outcomes. Further opportunities exist in examining the role of the context and in undertaking a multilevel analysis.

This review provides an understanding of what influences multinational enterprises’ FDI to EEs and how it impacts those economies. It also raises potential future research questions. It provides a holistic understanding of the chosen scope and domain.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the effects of innovation, specialisation, qualifications and sectoral structure on the resilience of German regions (municipal level) facing the Great Recession in 2008/2009.

To calculate the effects of various variables on the resilience of German regions against the Great Recession, the authors use quantile regressions. To measure resilience, the authors create a number of indexes representing different parts of the economy: resistance performance index, recovery performance index, shift-share resistance index, shift-share recovery index, manufacturing resistance index, manufacturing recovery index, service resistance index and service recovery index.

The results of this study confirm that locations with employment growth before the crisis and with a good industry structure show better employment dynamics during and after the crisis. The authors find evidence for positive relationship between innovativeness, qualification, the share of the service sector, specialisation and resistance. The authors obtain positive results for related variety and both resistance and recovery. The share of the manufacturing sector only shows a positive relationship with recovery.

The authors expand the existing literature in three aspects: First, instead of using regions as observation units, the authors conduct the analyses on the basis of municipalities and their surroundings. By doing so, the authors reduce the modifiable area unit problem because the authors do not rely on regions defined for administrative reasons. Second, the authors apply quantile regressions to detect nonlinear effects. Third, in addition to the resilience of the whole economy, the authors also study the resilience of the manufacturing and service sectors separately and examine the resilience of the local shift effect.

The historical evolution of the economy of Ireland's South East region is traced, highlighting Waterford's key role as the region's leading urban centre and port. What had been a rather traditional regional economic structure underwent considerable modernisation in the last two decades, but lacks the sectoral specialisation which provides a strong economic base in other Irish regions. The National Spatial Strategy, launched in 2002, sought to promote regional specialisation in exporting sectors, but lacked the governance structures required to drive the process. The current National Planning Framework is more focused on building up the main regional centres, but is likely to leave Waterford City well short of the scale required to be competitive in global markets. An alternative strategy is proposed, whereby Waterford would work in collaboration with the South East's unique set of strong county towns to create a distinctive and coherent, region-wide and sectorally focused, urban system. The success of such a project, however, would be dependent on the creation of a strong regional government tier and the devolution to the regions of a wide range of powers and functions currently concentrated at national level.

The circular economy (CE) has been endorsed as representing a model that is able to achieve environmental protection through decreased use of raw materials, together with changing economic values and social inclusion thanks to its demand for a wide variety of skill profiles. This has motivated many policy initiatives to support the implementation of the CE. The purpose of this study is to follow such policy initiatives in three geographically anchored industry-specific networks.

The study contributes to the research debate on the CE through a spatial approach with a focus on how the implementation of the CE is conditioned by spatial and regional contexts. The authors investigate three different networks in Sweden for CE with different locations and industrial profiles.

The findings reveal the difficulty that exist in relation to the implementation of the CE. The network and support functions in combination with private industry are vital. The risk of sustaining an uneven regional economic development is evident.

Although research on the development of the CE has proliferated, geographical approaches to this development are comparably rare to date. The authors seek to contextualise the strategy development and policy implementation of a CE policy.

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

This study aims to analyze the challenges facing five Palestinian clusters and to understand their dynamics and level of development. Using multiple sources of evidence, the research questions are answered using semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. Content analysis was used to analyze the data obtained. The five clusters in Palestine are located in a complex environment that imposes a mix of challenges that adversely affect their performance. The challenges facing Palestinian clusters are different in terms of their degree of complexity. The common challenges facing the Palestinian clusters are the fundamental lack of innovative stimulation policies or incentives in the Palestinian ecosystem, lack of trust, unfair competition, limited access to finance, lack of access to promising markets, and the limited collaboration between different parties. More focused policies are suggested to the Palestinian authorities.

The aim of this paper is to understand how systemic change agents influence the twin digital and green transitions. The authors build on agency-based theories to argue that transition pathways are influenced by a combination of place-based characteristics, the mobilisation and preferences of systemic change agents (such as local clusters), and the institutional and economic context. The conceptual framework defines the different steps of the twin transition, and it identifies how systemic change agents and geographic characteristics determine the direction and speed of the transition pathway.

This paper starts with a literature review to identify the different schools of thoughts on transition pathways and the twin transition, before developing a conceptual framework and deriving policy implications.

First, this paper argues that each transition involves three steps: framing, piloting and scaling. Each of these steps is driven by systemic change agents who engage local actors in trust-based collaboration, pool resources, create network effects and exchange information to source solutions for industry-level challenges. Second, the combination of place-based characteristics and the actions of local systemic change agents define the path of the transition and the new (post-transition) equilibrium. Finally, this paper sets out implications for policymakers who are interested in using systemic change agents to shape transition pathways in their local area.

Further research is needed to provide robust empirical evidence from a range of territorial realities for the hypotheses in this paper. Specifically, the role of systemic change agents, such as trade associations, regional organisations, clusters or research groupings, needs to be investigated more closely. These agents can play a key role in progressing the transition because they already focus on sourcing solutions to joint challenges and opportunities by exchanging information, engaging local actors in trust-based collaboration, pooling resources and fostering network effects and critical mass. Future research should investigate how policymakers can best leverage on these crucial actors to progress or steer transitions and how this varies depending on place-based characteristics. This could include, for instance, training activities, networking and collaboration (e.g. through the European Cluster Collaboration Platform) or clearer sign-posting the key next steps required for the transition.

This paper identifies specific ways in which local actors can influence the direction and speed of transitions at each stage of the transition: at the framing stage, political entrepreneurship can be fostered through collaboration and smooth information flows between different levels of governance, at the piloting stage, commercial and social entrepreneurship require effective knowledge sharing and a wide and open search for solutions which, in turn, may require capacity building at the local level and coordination across stakeholder groups and levels of governance and effective scaling up can be fostered through network effects, joint commitment from a broad range of stakeholders and pooling of resources to achieve economies of scale.

An important implication of the framework is that, if several places are undergoing a parallel or joint transition, the result may not be convergence between these places. Instead, different places may choose different end points and they may proceed at different speeds. For instance, in the context of the European Union’s green and digital transitions, it is unlikely that every region will transition to a similar level of digitisation or make steps in the same direction when it comes to sustainability.

This paper plugs a gap in understanding how systemic transitions unfold and how their speed and direction are influenced by different stakeholder groups. This paper develops a conceptual framework to define twin transition pathways and it analyses prominent place-based factors affecting these pathways.

This chapter contributes to the Public Value (PV) literature in relation to accounting by providing evidence on its content's operationalization through performance measurement. In particular, it establishes the link with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which may work as guiding principles of a public organization’s action. Accordingly, organizations embedding SDGs include them in their strategic decisions and disclose them through performance measurement and narratives.

The SDGs' presence is explored in the PV of a sample of Italian health institutes through documentary analysis of their performance plans. The aim is to verify if and how SDGs are pursued and whether the COVID-19 pandemic has affected PV content.

Besides Goal No. 3 (Health), the PV content of the investigated institutes contains various SDGs. Before the pandemic, their PV was aligned with SDGs mainly related to prosperity, economic growth and social inclusion. In the following period, the number of SDGs increased, introducing planet and environmental protection dimensions. No one explicitly mentions pursuing SDGs, revealing a non-institutionalized sensitivity of managers towards SDGs. The analysis distinguishes between ‘core’ SDGs, revealed mostly by traditional performance measures disclosing the achievement of institutes' mission, and ‘complementary’ SDGs, expressed mostly through narratives. This can derive from performance measurement, which employs the language of performativity, while the contribution to society is relegated in the narratives, making them less incisive.