Introduction

This special issue focuses on the importance of geography and/or space in explaining knowledge flows, entrepreneurship and innovation. During the last few decades spatial perspectives have enjoyed a growing attention outside the specific discipline of geography both in academic economics and among practitioners of policy and planning. In economics we find these tendencies in newer and/or more heterodox types of economics than the traditional mainstream, which with the exception of “regional economics” and trade theory has not paid much attention to the role of space. According to Krugman (2000: 49):

while this [neoclassical] tradition need not in principle exclude the possibilities of increasing returns, imperfectly competitive markets, and a crucial role for history, in practice the understandable tendency to follow the line of least mathematical resistance has biased trade theory toward static, perfectly competitive, constant returns stories. Unfortunately, it is not possible to use those stories to address most of the interesting questions in economic geography.