Erschienen:
Louvain-la-Neuve: European Regional Science Association (ERSA), 2003
Sprache:
Englisch
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
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Beschreibung:
Among the (most important) reasons underlying the lack of convergence of some regions towards the national and the European Union average there has been the strong gap in technological endowment and innovation capacity. In this perspective, the requirements of the “knowledge-based economy” and the observed contribution of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to economic growth are very likely to have a significant impact upon regional growth: however, it is far from clear whether this effect will lead to greater convergence or, on the contrary, to stronger territorial polarization. From preliminary evidence, the new ICT paradigm is showing contradictory consequences, insofar as it seems to indicate more peculiar features and different transmission modalities than the ‘old’ technologies – for instance among SMEs. At the same time, the recent debate has focused on whether and to what extent such a technological shift can be viewed as “horizontal” – that is, able to propagate growth in the overall economic system, thus representing a “radical technological change” – or, rather, if it is a more limited and sector-specific type of progress. Yet, empirical evidence seems to reveal that ICT does not only show outstanding dynamics as a single industry, but also a great capacity to promote growth in other sectors, both traditional and technology-intensive; furthermore, the diffusion of the new technologies turns out to be highly spatially variable and externalities promoting the adoption of the new technology seem to be stronger at the sub-national level. Yet, the ICT spread does not affect uniformly different firms’ dimensional classes and geographical systems - which vary deeply in terms of access capacity, connection variety and absorptive attitude - possibly giving further impulse to (or helping to reduce) the gap between cores and peripheries. As in the case of the ‘old’ technologies, not all regions are expected to be on the cutting edge of the information and communication paradigm, but all need to ...