Introduction: Endogenous Regional Growth and Policies

A rich literature has grown up around the concept of the rise in the importance of regions in the global economic system. According to this view global trade has the form of interaction between functional regions, rather than between countries. As this vision has evolved, empirical observations suggest that global and national economic change should be understood as a process, which is dependent on local dynamics operating on the regional level. Perceptions and models of such change can be underpinned with various theoretical perspectives generally referred to as the new endogenous growth theory. The term endogenous implies that economic growth is influenced by the use of “investment resources” generated by the economy itself — in contradistinction to the reference made to exogenous factors in the Solow type growth models.