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Exploring Innovation Gaps in the American Space Economy

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Regional Research Frontiers - Vol. 1

Part of the book series: Advances in Spatial Science ((ADVSPATIAL))

Abstract

This chapter explores disparities in urban innovation, in the context of the history of city systems and advanced urban economies. The overall innovative index of metropolitan economies is estimated by first generating its score on each of the latent dimensions and then adding up those performance scores across all of the dimensions. The results produced a clear set of innovation centers, spread evenly across the United States. Not only do these findings square with contemporary theory on agglomeration economies, as explained by Mulligan et al. (Ann Reg Sci 48:405–431, 2012), they line up nicely with older, less behaviorally motivated theories of central place hierarchies. The paper concludes with a discussion of the main challenges facing regional science in the research areas of innovation and urban growth.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For further details, see Renner et al. (2009).

  2. 2.

    In the natural sciences, a good analogy is the relationship between Newton’s laws of motion, which, to this day work well for many practical applications, but—their enduring power and utility—were shown to be incomplete and wholly supplanted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

  3. 3.

    It is worth noting that patent counts can be problematic for cross-country comparisons for a number of reasons. For example Japan applied a higher standard for judging innovation with the result that it is more stringent in awarding patents than a number of other countries, including the United States. See de Rassenfosse et al. (2016).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Randy Jackson and Peter Schaeffer for their helpful comments on a previous draft of this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Gordon F. Mulligan

  2. Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, USA

    Neil Reid

  3. Sustainable Urban Planning Program, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

    John I. Carruthers

  4. Ph.D. Program in Spatially Integrated Social Sciences, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, USA

    Matthew R. Lehnert

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  1. Gordon F. Mulligan
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  2. Neil Reid
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  4. Matthew R. Lehnert
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Correspondence to Gordon F. Mulligan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA

    Randall Jackson

  2. Division of Resource Economics and Management, Faculty Research Associate, Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA

    Peter Schaeffer

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Mulligan, G.F., Reid, N., Carruthers, J.I., Lehnert, M.R. (2017). Exploring Innovation Gaps in the American Space Economy. In: Jackson, R., Schaeffer, P. (eds) Regional Research Frontiers - Vol. 1. Advances in Spatial Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50547-3_2

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