Data Mining Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques

The Study of Man. By Michael Polanyi. Price, $1.75. Pp. 102. University of Chicago Press, 5750 Ellis Ave., Chicago 37, 1959. One subtitle to Polanyi's challenging and fascinating book might be The Evolution and Natural History of Error , for Polanyi is at pains to expunge what he believes to be the false notion contained in the contemporary view of science which treats it as an object and basically impersonal discipline. According to Polanyi not only is this a radical and important error, but it is harmful to the objectives of science itself. Another subtitle could be Farewell to Detachment , for in place of cold objectivity he develops the idea that science is necessarily intensely personal. It is a human endeavor and human point of view which cannot be divorced from nor uprooted out of the human matrix from which it arises and in which it works. For a good while

Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process.

Geography and Trade

The question of how new regional growth paths emerge has been raised by many leading economic geographers. From an evolutionary perspective, there are strong reasons to believe that regions are most likely to branch into industries that are technologically related to the preexisting industries in the region. Employing a new indicator of technological relatedness between manufacturing industries, we analyze the economic evolution of 70 Swedish regions during the period 1969-2002 using detailed plant-level data. Our analyses show that the long-term evolution of the economic landscape in Sweden is subject to strong path dependencies. Industries that were technologically related to pre-existing industries in a region had a higher probability to enter the region, as compared to unrelated industries. And unrelated industries had a higher probability to exit the region. Moreover, we found that industrial profiles of Swedish regions showed a high degree of technological coherence. Despite substantial structural change, this coherence was very persistent over time. Our methodology also proved useful when focusing on the economic evolution of one particular region. Our analysis showed that the Linkˆping region increased its industrial coherence during 30 years, due to the entry of industries that were closely related to its regional portfolio on the one hand, and the exit of industries that were technologically peripheral to its regional portfolio on the other hand. In sum, we find systematic evidence that the rise and fall of industries is strongly conditioned by industrial relatedness at the regional level.

How do regions diversify over time? Industry relatedness and the development of new growth paths in regions

The question of how new regional growth paths emerge has been raised by many leading economic geographers. From an evolutionary perspective, there are strong reasons to believe that regions are most likely to branch into industries that are technologically related to the preexisting industries in the regions. Using a new indicator of technological relatedness between manufacturing industries, we analyzed the economic evolution of 70 Swedish regions from 1969 to 2002 with detailed plant-level data. Our analyses show that the long-term evolution of the economic landscape in Sweden is subject to strong path dependencies. Industries that were technologically related to the preexisting industries in a region had a higher probability of entering that region than did industries that were technologically unrelated to the region's preexisting industries. These industries had a higher probability of exiting that region. Moreover, the industrial profiles of Swedish regions showed a high degree of technological cohesion. Despite substantial structural change, this cohesion was persistent over time. Our methodology also proved useful when we focused on the economic evolution of one particular region. Our analysis indicates that the Linkoping region increased its industrial cohesion over 30 years because of the entry of industries that were closely related to its regional portfolio and the exit of industries that were technologically peripheral. In summary, we found systematic evidence that the rise and fall of industries is strongly conditioned by industrial relatedness at the regional level.

/pdf/how-do-regions-diversify-over-time-industry-relatedness-and-43utdtkol3.pdf

How do regions diversify over time? Industry relatedness and the development of new growth paths in regions.

According to the knowledge-based view of the firm, a firm’s workforce is its most important resource, and firms often diversify into activities that allow them to leverage human resources. Human capital also represents a main asset for employees. When switching jobs, individuals are expected to remain in industries that value the skills that they have developed in their previous work. Based on this observation, this article develops theoretical arguments and a statistical method that uses cross-industry labor flows to assess the skill-relatedness between industries. Industries classified in different sectors of the economy sometimes exhibit strong skill-relatedness linkages. Also, industry space, i.e., the resulting network that connects industries with overlapping skill requirements, is highly predictive of diversification moves on the part of firms. Diversification is found to be over 100 times more likely to occur into industries that have ties to a firm’s core activity in terms of skills than into industries that do not. This effect of skill-relatedness eclipses the effect of other types of relatedness, such as value chain linkages and classification-based relatedness.

Skill-relatedness and firm diversification

Because of the importance of human capital, a firm's choice of diversification targets will depend on whether these targets offer opportunities for leveraging existing human resources. We propose to quantify the similarity of different industries' human capital or skill requirements, that is, the industries' skill relatedness, by using information on cross-industry labor flows. Labor flows among industries can be used to identify skill relatedness, because individuals changing jobs will likely remain in industries that value the skills associated with their previous work. Estimates show that firms are far more likely to diversify into industries that have ties to the firms' core activities in terms of our skill-relatedness measure than into industries without such ties or into industries that are linked by value chain linkages or by classification-based relatedness. Copyright (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

/pdf/skill-relatedness-and-firm-diversification-296xc4rhrq.pdf

Skill relatedness and firm diversification

Who introduces structural change in regional economies: Entrepreneurs or existing firms? And do local or nonlocal establishment founders create most novelty in a region? We develop a theoretical framework that focuses on the roles different agents play in regional transformation. We then apply this framework, using Swedish matched employer–employee data, to determine how novel the activities of new establishments are to a region. Incumbents mainly reinforce a region’s current specialization: incumbent’s growth, decline, and industry switching further align them with the rest of the local economy. The unrelated diversification required for structural change mostly originates via new establishments, especially via those with nonlocal roots. Interestingly, although entrepreneurs often introduce novel activities to a local economy, when they do so, their ventures have higher failure rates compared to new subsidiaries of existing firms. Consequently, new subsidiaries manage to create longer-lasting change in regions.

/pdf/agents-of-structural-change-the-role-of-firms-and-1n5074c2s8.pdf

Frank Neffke

Papers

How do regions diversify over time? Industry relatedness and the development of new growth paths in regions

How do regions diversify over time? Industry relatedness and the development of new growth paths in regions.

Skill-relatedness and firm diversification

Skill relatedness and firm diversification

Agents of Structural Change: The Role of Firms and Entrepreneurs in Regional Diversification