Evolution in Economic Geography: Institutions, Regional Adaptation and Political Economy

Economic geography has, over the last decade or so, drawn upon ideas from evolutionary economics in trying to understand processes of regional growth and change, with the concept of path dependence assuming particular prominence. Recently, some prominent researchers have sought to delimit and develop an evolutionary economic geography (EEG) as a distinct approach, aiming to create a more coherent and systematic theoretical framework for research. This paper contributes to debates on the nature and development of EEG. It has two main aims. First, we seek to restore a broader conception of social institutions and agency to EEG, informed by the recent writings of institutional economists like Geoffrey Hodgson. Second, we link evolutionary concepts to political economy approaches, arguing that the evolution of the economic landscape must be related to the broader dynamics of capital accumulation, centred upon the creation, realisation and geographical transfer of value. As such, we favour the utilisation of evolutionary and institutional concepts within a geographical political economy approach rather than the construction of a separate and theoretically ‘pure’ EEG; evolution in economic geography, not an evolutionary economic geography

The organisation of sociality: a manifesto for a new science of multi-agent systems

In this paper, we pose and motivate a challenge, namely the need for a new science of multi-agent systems. We propose that this new science should be grounded, theoretically on a richer conception of sociality, and methodologically on the extensive use of computational modelling for real-world applications and social simulations. Here, the steps we set forth towards meeting that challenge are mainly theoretical. In this respect, we provide a new model of multi-agent systems that reflects a fully explicated conception of cognition, both at the individual and the collective level. Finally, the mechanisms and principles underpinning the model will be examined with particular emphasis on the contributions provided by contemporary organisation theory

Clinical encounter and the logic of relationality : Reconfiguring bodies and subjectivities in clinical relations

Acknowledgements I would like to thank all the patients and staff for their collaboration in the study and to acknowledge the other members of the team: James N’Dow and Sara MacLennan for their helpful guidance. I am grateful to Zoë Skea and Vikki Entwistle for the early discussions of the paper, to Natasha Mauthner and Lorna McKee for their insightful comments to various drafts, and to two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions, which helped to clarify its argument. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a grant from the Big Lottery Fund. The views expressed here are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the funding bodies or any other organisation.Peer reviewedPostprin

A Theoretical Exploration of the Adoption and Design of Flexible Benefit Plans: A Case of Human Resource Innovation

This article explores theoretical explanations of managers\u27 decisions about flexible benefit plans. We (1) examine the adoption and design of flexible benefit plans through four theoretic lenses: institutional, resource dependence, agency, and transaction costs; (2) integrate the relevant insights gained from these theories into a more complete model and derive propositions for future research; and (3) generalize the insights gained from exploring a specific innovation to broader questions surrounding decisions about other human resource innovations

Agency in Social Context

Many political philosophers argue that interference threatens a person’s agency. And they cast political freedom in opposition to interpersonal threats to agency, as non-interference. I argue that this approach relies on an inapt model of agency, crucial aspects of which emerge from our relationships with other people. Such relationships involve complex patterns of vulnerability and subjection, essential to our constitution as particular kinds of agents: as owners of property, as members of families, and as participants in a market for labor. We should construct a conception of freedom that targets the structures of our interpersonal relations, and the kinds of agents these relations make us. Such a conception respects the interpersonal foundations of human agency. It also allows us to draw morally significant connections between diverse species of unfreedom—between, for instance, localized domination and structural oppression

Measuring the Institutional Change of the Monetary Regime in a Political Economy Perspective (Groups of interest and monetary variables during the Currency Board introduction in Bulgaria)

The paper explores the possibilities to measure the institutional change in the monetary field. A political economy theoretical framework is built up, where the change of the monetary regime is analyzed as the outcome of the debtors - creditors interactions. In this perspective, the value of some traditional monetary variables during the period before and after the introduction of the Currency Board in Bulgaria, in 1997, reveals the main actors' evolving relative positions.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40118/3/wp732.pd

Beyond core-periphery relationship in the EC cooperation

During the current process of EU enlargement, regions are confronted with a need to revise their relative position within the newly formed socio-economic, spatial and cultural spaces. As existing equilibria are severely affected, the type and direction of developmental trends of member states (and regions) are increasingly questioned. Concerns are being raised about the risks that the annealing process would trigger a number of undesirable processes, i.e. loss of comparative advantages, regions lagging behind, accentuation of socio-economic gaps, social unbalances resulting from migration flows of poor population. These might hamper the path of European integration and eventually result in a reinforcement of the more accessible well developed areas and a loss of more peripheral and relatively underdeveloped ones. In this context, cooperation amongst the member states, and in particular, their local governments, may play a significant role to both overcome those risks and favouring the EU integration process. Information on cooperation (and integration) for the European countries is extensive and provides detailed accounts of the initiatives which have been undertaken since the establishment of EU programs in the early sixties. Although the variety of cooperation (integration) programs which have been launched as the EU unification progressed are well documented, existing studies have rarely questioned the kind of evolution ( i.e. type and extent of the changes underlying the various initiatives) those programs underwent. The aim of this paper is to undertake a preliminary step in this analysis. A claim is made that: a. on the one hand, the widening of the scopes of cooperation programs and increasing number of eligible actors involved are significantly reinforcing the potentials of cooperation in favouring the integration process not only among the member countries but also different kind of areas (i.e. between metropolitan and peripheral cities); b. on the other hand, there is a need to refine the current approaches to cooperation and develop a conceptual framework which serves as a basis for both formulating the various initiatives and defining effective benchmarks for their evaluation. The paper is organized in three main sections. The first addresses some methodological questions about the definition of what should be understood as a cooperation situation. An effort is made to identify a conceptual framework which might be relevant for dealing with cooperative actions in a institutionalised setting. This is then used in the second section to provide an account of the evolution of the EU programs on cooperation. Finally, in the last section attention is turned to the strengths (i.e. greater attention to the spatial dimension of cooperation programs, more equalitarian relationships amongst the participants) and weaknesses (i.e. lack of a shared model of cooperative actions) of the current approaches to cooperation. An effort is made to emphasize a few relevant questions which can be challenging in the current EU policies and thinking.