Economic Geography

Influential geographers and non-geographers
Morgan Thomas and his students at the University of Washington (Geoffrey
Hewings, Rodney Erickson, William Beyers, Gunter Krumme, Richard Le
Heron, Guy Steed) were on the forefront of understanding regional develop-
ment, integrating economics and geography. Their work was – and, in many
cases, continues to be – central to the questions of regional economic develop-
ment. Gordon Clark pioneered solid empirical research in economic geography
on capital investment and finance. John Rees, using transatlantic connections,
was the networker who convened several conferences that brought British and
American economic geographers together, with the help of F. E. Ian Hamilton,
Barry Moriarty, and Howard Stafford. Broader international networks were
formed under the auspices of the various International Geographical Union (IGU)
Commissions on industrial geography. Sadly, several of this group (Hamilton,
Moriarty and Thomas) are no longer with us.
Peter Dicken (1986) summarized masterfully this work at the global scale, 
in a book that has been very successful in communicating geography to wider
audiences through four editions (Dicken 2003). Dicken set a standard few others
have matched in the empirical base he draws upon. It remains important for our
research – and our theories – to match to a considerable degree what is out there
in the real world.
Among non-geographers, economist Richard Nelson and the new 
evolutionary economics that he (with Sidney Winter) initiated in the 1970s are
(explicitly or implicitly) essential to the understanding of technological change,
institutions and economic growth (although apparently he never reads the work
of geographers). Based more on what Nelson (1998) calls ‘appreciative theory’
than on the mathematical models of formal theory, the sub-field of evolutionary
economics has much to offer to economic geographers. Those who call them-
selves evolutionary economists have done much to develop the set of concepts
so important to understanding economic dynamics, whether at the national,
regional, or local scale.
Technology, knowledge, and jobs
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Edward J. Malecki