Bringing History into Evolutionary Economic Geography for a Better Understanding of Evolution

The paper tries to construct the historical methodology for evolutionary economic geography. I elevate history to the methodological foundation of evolutionary economic geography, on which concrete research methods should be based. I explore how to evolution in economic geography by placing history in historical time and historical contexts. Accordingly, the concepts of path creation and path dependence should be used together in historical study. More important, the concept of path interdependence, which stresses the importance of the circumstances under which different processes and events are likely to occur, opens a new window on the temporal aspects of the world.Organizational ecology, fashion industry, creative industries, clusters, institutional lock-in

The emergence of clusters in societal transition : a coevolutionary perspective on the TCM cluster at Tonghua/China

New industries are recognized as new impetus to national wealth. At the same time, they are increasingly becoming geographically concentrated in some well defined areas. But current studies on the emergence of industrial clusters tend to analyze favorable driving factors. This dissertation takes the example of a Chinese endogenous industrial cluster, the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) cluster at Tonghua, a small peripheral city in Northeastern China, to contribute to the theoretical understanding of the emergence of industrial cluster as a co-evolutionary process of organizations, institutions and firms, or, to put it more broadly, as economic evolution embedded in complex socio-economic contexts. The recent advance in evolutionary and co-evolutionary economics which considers the economy and economic landscape as dynamic process instead of equilibrium can be regarded as a part of broader and more intellectual turn of quest for history in social sciences. Although the principle of "history matters" is widely acknowledged, it tends to be reduced to a quite simple concept of "path dependence". However, path dependence cannot offer space for new path creation, except from an external shock. Accordingly, the role of human conscious action or Schumpeterian innovation should be added to path analysis through the concept of path creation. Furthermore, and more importantly, history should be understood as context, and historical context can be explored through the understanding of multi-paths and interaction among them over time. So path inter-dependence (co-evolution between paths) would be useful to better understand the complexity of real history. Since the industrial cluster is composed of interconnected firms and is also subject to changes in institution and technology, I will focus on the multi-way causal relationship between firm, institution and technology. The theorizing is not entirely new, but most of the theoretical and empirical discussions are at the national or industrial level, not regional or local one. A competitive cluster can be regarded as a co-evolutionary hotspot in which multiple populations actively interact and are interconnected. Co-evolution itself is a dynamic and evolutionary process. So I will adopt a dynamic and evolutionary view to examine co-evolutionary degree or co-evolutionary effects in the Tonghua pharmaceutical cluster through time. After a brief introduction which deals with the national institutional changes that are highly associated with new venture creation, entrepreneurship, and innovation, with registrations on drug and healthcare system, and with changes in market demand of China’s pharmaceutical industry and geographical distribution, I will collect evidences from three aspects based upon field survey and second hand data, i.e., the history of the enterprises, the origin of entrepreneurship, and the knowledge of evolution, linking their respective generative relationships through the genealogical method. In this volume, the evolution of the Tonghua pharmaceutical firm organization, the formation of local entrepreneurship, historical accumulation of knowledge, and particular knowledge of transfer among generations of firms will be discussed, then I will probe into co-adaption and co-evolution between local formal and informal institutions and organizations in Tonghua’s TCM industry. In addition, I will try to understand the co-evolutionary process at different geographical levels (namely, national and local). In summary, my main findings include the following several points. Firstly, in the course of the emergence of Tonghua’s pharmaceutical industry, local social networks and the traditional alliance between enterprises and government have played important roles. Secondly, the most important factor that influences the evolution of endogenous industrial clusters such as the Tonghua pharmaceutical industry in transitional countries is not the change in technology, but the change in fundamental national institutions. Thirdly, the success of the Tonghua pharmaceutical industry can be ascribed to the creation of multiple paths largely based on initial conditions, which implies that economic policy should have historical consciousness, namely, new economic innovation should make full use of both historical legacies and existing assets. Finally, it is co-adaption and co-selection of firm organization, institution, and technology that have jointly made Tonghua’s pharmaceutical industry become highly competitive, which means that whether one region can grasp new opportunities partially depends on its capabilities to coordinate a varity of development agents.Neue Industrien werden im Allgemeinen als Impuls der Entwicklung zu nationalem Wohlstand verstanden. Zugleich sind sie überwiegend an einigen geographisch genau definierten Orten konzentriert. Aktuelle Studien zur Emergenz dieser Industrie-Cluster neigen dazu, entsprechende begünstigende Faktoren zu analysieren. Mit dem Beispiel eines endogenen Clusters in China, dem Cluster der Traditionellen Chinesischen Medizin (TCM) in Tonghua, will diese Dissertation zum theoretischen Verständnis der Emergenz von Industrie-Clustern unter der Perspektive eines ko-evolutorischen Prozesses von Form der Organisation, Institutionen und Unternehmen beitragen. Oder, um es etwas breiter auszudrücken, diese Emergenz als ökonomische Evolution zu verstehen, die in einen komplexen sozio-ökonomischen Kontext eingebettet ist. Obgleich der Vorstellung, Geschichte habe eine Bedeutung („history matters“), überwiegend in der Forschung zugestimmt wird, bleibt diese oft auf das Konzept der Pfadabhängigkeit beschränkt. Das aber eröffnet keinen Raum für die Betrachtung endogener Pfad-Bildung. Dem Konzept der Pfad-Bildung entsprechend sollte jedoch die Pfadanalyse ergänzt werden um bewusste Handlungen des Menschen oder auch um Innovationen im Schumpeterschen Sinn. Wichtiger ist außerdem, dass Geschichte als ein Kontext verstanden werden sollte, in dem mehrere Pfade ko-existieren und im Zeitverlauf auch interagieren. So wäre ein Konzept der Pfad-Interdependenz (oder der Ko-Evolution von Pfaden) nützlich zum besseren Verständnis der Komplexität „wirklicher“ Geschichte. Weil das Industriecluster sich aus untereinander verflochtenen Unternehmen zusammen setzt und zugleich Gegenstand von Änderungen in den Institutionen und der Technologie ist, konzentriert sich die Dissertation auf vielseitige kausale Beziehungen von Unternehmen, Institutionen und Technologie. Ein wettbewerbsfähiges Cluster kann aus geographischer Sicht als ein „hot spot“ der Ko-evolution betrachtet werden, in dem verschiedenartige Populationen aktiv untereinander agieren und daher miteinander verflochten sind. Ko-Evolution selbst ist dann ein dynamischer und evolutorischer Prozess. Die Arbeit wählt diese Perspektive, um das Maß und die Wirkungen der Ko-Evolution im Pharma-Cluster von Tonghua im Zeitverlauf zu analysieren. Die Dissertation fußt auf empirischen Erhebungen, ergänzt um eine Dokumenten-Analyse, zur Geschichte der Unternehmen, der Herkunft der Unternehmerschaft sowie der Evolution von Wissen. Sie diskutiert die Evolution in den Organisationsformen der Pharma-Unternehmen in Tonghua, die Bildung einer lokalen Unternehmerschaft, die historische Akkumulation von Wissen und den besonderen Wissenstransfer zwischen Generationen von Unternehmen. Schließlich untersucht sie die Ko-Adaption und Ko-Evolution von lokalen formalen und informellen Institutionen und Organisationen der TCM-Industrie in Tonghua. Die folgenden Punkte betreffen die wichtigsten Ergebnisse der Dissertation: Erstens haben sehr langfristige und dichte lokale soziale Netzwerke eine erhebliche Rolle im Lauf der Emergenz der Pharma-Industrie in Tonghua gespielt. Zweitens ist der wichtigste Faktor in der Pharma-Industrie nicht im technologischen Fortschritt durch Anstrengungen bei Forschung und Entwicklung (FuE) zu sehen, sondern im institutionellen Wandel sowohl auf nationaler als auch auf lokaler Ebene. Drittens kann der Erfolg der Pharma-Industrie in Tonghua der Bildung multipler Pfade zugeschrieben werden, die auf bestimmten Anfangsbedingungen gründen. Das bedeutet, dass die neue ökonomische Entwicklungspolitik sowohl das historische Erbe als auch bestehende Aktivposten in vollem Umfang nutzen sollte. Schließlich ist festzustellen, dass Ko-Adaption und Ko-Selektion der Unternehmens-Organisation, von Institutionen und Technologie zusammen die Pharma-Industrie von Tonghua in hohem Maße wettbewerbsfähig gemacht haben. Ob eine Region neue Gelegenheiten ergreifen kann, hängt folglich teilweise von ihrer Fähigkeit ab, eine Vielfalt von Entwicklungs-Agenten zu koordinieren

The hybrid spatialities of post-industrial Beijing: communism, neoliberalism, and brownfield redevelopment

While the redevelopment of urban brownfield sites in China has received much attention, the role of political ideology in this process is usually downplayed or sidelined to a set of stylized assumptions. This paper invites giving a greater analytical focus to the evolving and nonorthodox nature of China’s politico-ideological model as a factor shaping urban change and redevelopment. The paper provides an analytical framework integrating multi-level and evolutionary perspectives while exploring the experiences of the formation and post-industrial redevelopment of brownfield sites in Beijing. The analysis demonstrates that neoliberal economic policies and the communist political doctrine are co-constitutive in the production of China’s post-industrial urban space. This produces a sense of spatial hybridity that combines and co-embeds what may be assumed to be mutually exclusive

Improved characterization of Clematis based on new chloroplast microsatellite markers and nuclear ITS sequences

Currently, there is a lack of genetic markers capable of effectively detecting polymorphisms in Clematis. Therefore, we developed new markers to investigate inter- and intraspecific diversity in Clematis. Based on the complete chloroplast genome of Clematis terniflora, simple sequence repeats were explored and primer pairs were designed for all ten adequate repeat regions (cpSSRs), which were tested in 43 individuals of 11 Clematis species. In addition, the nuclear ITS region was sequenced in 11 Clematis species. Seven cpSSR loci were found to be polymorphic in the genus and serve as markers that can distinguish different species and be used in different genetic analyses, including cultivar identification to assist the breeding of new ornamental cultivars.Peer reviewe

SDT: A Low-cost and Topology-reconfigurable Testbed for Network Research

Network experiments are essential to network-related scientific research (e.g., congestion control, QoS, network topology design, and traffic engineering). However, (re)configuring various topologies on a real testbed is expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone. In this paper, we propose \emph{Software Defined Topology Testbed (SDT)}, a method for constructing a user-defined network topology using a few commodity switches. SDT is low-cost, deployment-friendly, and reconfigurable, which can run multiple sets of experiments under different topologies by simply using different topology configuration files at the controller we designed. We implement a prototype of SDT and conduct numerous experiments. Evaluations show that SDT only introduces at most 2\% extra overhead than full testbeds on multi-hop latency and is far more efficient than software simulators (reducing the evaluation time by up to 2899x). SDT is more cost-effective and scalable than existing Topology Projection (TP) solutions. Further experiments show that SDT can support various network research experiments at a low cost on topics including but not limited to topology design, congestion control, and traffic engineering.Comment: This paper will be published in IEEE CLUSTER 2023. Preview version onl

Effective and efficient structure learning with pruning and model averaging strategies

Learning the structure of a Bayesian Network (BN) with score-based solutions involves exploring the search space of possible graphs and moving towards the graph that maximises a given objective function. Some algorithms offer exact solutions that guarantee to return the graph with the highest objective score, while others offer approximate solutions in exchange for reduced computational complexity. This paper describes an approximate BN structure learning algorithm, which we call Model Averaging Hill-Climbing (MAHC), that combines two novel strategies with hill-climbing search. The algorithm starts by pruning the search space of graphs, where the pruning strategy can be viewed as an aggressive version of the pruning strategies that are typically applied to combinatorial optimisation structure learning problems. It then performs model averaging in the hill-climbing search process and moves to the neighbouring graph that maximises the objective function, on average, for that neighbouring graph and over all its valid neighbouring graphs. Comparisons with other algorithms spanning different classes of learning suggest that the combination of aggressive pruning with model averaging is both effective and efficient, particularly in the presence of data noise

XRD Characterization of Phenol Liquefied Chinese Fir Residues

The amount of wood residue is used as a measurement of the extent of wood liquefaction. Characterization of the residue from wood liquefaction provides a new approach to understand some fundamental aspects of the liquefaction reaction. This paper adopts X-ray diffraction to characterize the changes of groups and mechanism of reaction of the residue crystallinity in the liquefaction process of Chinese Fir. The XRD analysis of liquefaction residue showed that amorphous region is firstly damaged so that the crystallinity could be in the trend of increasing in the liquefaction process of Chinese fir in most cases with the time’s prolonging. However, cellulose crystalline region begins to be destroyed under the higher liquefied temperature (170℃）or in the case of higher P/W (w/w) ratio (5), leading to the relative decreased trend of crystallinity. Key words: Chinese Fir; XRD; Liquefaction; Residu