Regional Growth, Connections and Economic Modelling: An Introduction

With increasing globalization over recent decades, the impacts of economic stimuli at the national level have diminished in terms of their importance for economic processes; the stimuli are increasingly originating at the international level. As markets integrate, the competitors of firms are generally firms from other countries and the domestic market is no longer and not necessarily the most important one. At the same time, the internal resources of firms are no longer sufficient for their competitiveness in a globalized World, and, to sustain their growth, they have to rely increasingly on external resources, knowledge in particular, which are normally accessible at the local and regional level (Audretsch 1988). The regional scale, therefore, has increased in importance for economic growth as a result of globalization forces; competition is now centered on region-region interactions with the regions often located in different countries.