Social Capital and Business Development in High-Technology Clusters

The economics of regional clusters, where business formation, technological innovation, and the emergence of a highly-skilled labor force converge, has become a popular topic. This fascinating book applies a variety of tools and models to analyze, in depth, the formation and growth of high-tech clusters. It does this first by exploring the institutional forces that promote the failure or success of such agglomerations, and then by focusing on the dynamics of the labor force.

Neslihan Aydogan It is now widely accepted that geographical proximity matters to economic and - cial life. Not only does it provide externalities that reduce transaction costs, but it also helps transacting parties form networks from which they can bene t greatly. More than ever, economists have been trying to bridge the development gap between poor and rich regions. Agglomerations are investigated toward that target because economists think that if certain regions can mix up that special formula to conti- ously innovate and produce, then understanding and forming such agglomerations could be one way to go about that growth path. We have designed the chapters of this book to work out the mechanics of geographical agglomerations in the United States with the focus of identifying the characteristics of such special formula Chapters 13 are designed to investigate the high-tech clusters that have sprung up in the United States due to their innovative capacity to engage in high-val- added activities. The rst question we ask is, What promotes the productivity of high-tech rms? We ask this question by taking into account the region in which a rm is located and the spillover effects of the region on the rm. In particular, we ask if the presence of a variety of industries or of similar industries promotes the productivity of high-tech rms. In this regard, we are interested in distingui- ing the high- and low-tech rms in terms of their driving factors.

Provides fascinating new insights on the dynamics of knowledge transfer in high-tech environments Entrepreneurship and innovation continue to be popular topics in research and practice Considers implications for policymaking and education/training

Inhalt
How High-Tech Industries Benefit from the Economies of Agglomeration.- Tacit Knowledge Transfer, Geographical Proximity, and Inter-Firm Contracts: The Silicon Valley Case.- Reciprocity, Proximity and Performance of Research Consortia.- Citizenship, Social Capital, and Spatial Assimilation of Highly Skilled Labor and Location Choice.- Ethnic and Technical Clustering: Native-Born Americans Versus Foreign S&E Graduates.