Economic Geography

Strengths and weaknesses of geographical analysis
What (many) geographers do best is to read widely and to grab an idea that 
originates elsewhere, and to enrich that idea with empirical detail. While econo-
mists and sociologists cite mainly within their own disciplines, geographers draw
upon a wider cross-section of the social sciences and management studies.
Geographers also tend to be more grounded in the real world than scholars in
disciplines where an underlying theory or model has held sway for many years.
Geography’s own diversity truly reflects the diversity found in the world around
us. Economic geography – or geographies – are products of research on the 
varieties of capitalism and of interactions of people and of institutions with those
various systems (Lee and Wills 1997).
Geographers also try to grapple with unmeasured phenomena, such as link-
ages and interactions among firms, which range from aggregate intersectoral
input–output flows to untraded interdependencies. Päivi Oinas and I have tried
to map the numerous ways in which interfirm links affect the levels of knowledge
and technology in various places (Oinas and Malecki 2002). These are difficult
issues to study, relying on data that can be obtained only through interviews,
compilation of anecdotal accounts, and detailed case studies; several such studies
were included in Malecki and Oinas (1999).
Virtually lost from the early days is interaction with economics. In the 1970s,
one could still find economists who were willing to think out loud outside the
framework of neoclassical theory and its models. Such people are much more
difficult to find today, even in regional science, where fewer cross-disciplinary
conversations take place. Despite the emergence of a ‘new economic geography’,
there seems to be much less interaction between economists and geographers
than was the case in the 1970s.
Economists from outside the mainstream, in such sub-disciplines as evolution-
ary economics and industrial organization, occasionally take note of the work of
economic geographers, as long as it appears in the right journals, such as Research
Policy and Industrial and Corporate Change, in which few geographers have
published. More geographical research should appear in those journals, rather
than in outlets that focus on abstract, model-based research, whether labeled as
Technology, knowledge, and jobs
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Edward J. Malecki
the new economic geography or not. Only a few journals, such as Regional
Studies, are cited by scholars from several disciplines.