Oedzge Atzema, Ton van Rietbergen, Jan Lambooy and Sjef van Hoof - Dynamics in economic geography

Foreword to revised third edition

The global economy is in a near-permanent state of flux. Banks merge and split up again, former developing countries account for an ever-growing slice of world trade and innovations force one industry into a defensive position and allow another to flourish. The integration of the European economy is stagnating and EU expansion and indeed the EU itself are increasingly called into question. As an empirical applied science, economic geography can help explain this growing economic turbulence. Rooted in 19th-century theory, it has evolved and adapted over time. In recent decades, economic geographers have studied globalization, regional institutional variation and the spatial evolution of industries, and people are listening to what they have to say. The aim of this book is to give students and other interested readers an up-to date introduction to economic geography. It purports to be no more than an introduction, although the bibliography provides a good overview of the cur rent research results. Compared with the second edition published in 2002, how the chapters are organized and the topics that are addressed have been drastically updated. The book consists of two parts. An introductory chapter outlining the rela tion between economic geography and economic science is followed by four chapters addressing locational issues from a variety of perspectives revolving around why businesses choose a particular location. The next four chapters each focus on specific regions and nations and how economic differences between regions come about and can be compared. All the chapters have the same structure, whether from a business or a regional perspective. Chapter 2 discusses the classical and neoclassical per spective, Chapter 3 the behavioural approach and Chapter 4 the institutional aspects, i.e. how industries/regions are organized. Lastly, we examine the evo lutionary approach, which has recently had a sharp rise in popularity in eco nomic geographic literature. We would like to express our gratitude to Margot Stoete from the Faculty of Earth Sciences at the University of Utrecht for producing the figures and to Suzanne Loohuis and Jan Scheffers at Coutinho Publishers, without whose insightful comments and unwavering commitment this book would not have been feasible in its current form. We hope the book will serve as a suitable