Major credit rating agencies give out the sovereign credit rating of each nation as an absolute grade. How other nations fare over the period under consideration does not matter in a particular nation’s rating score. This is very different from a comparative rating which would tell us...

There is increasing recognition that the existence of clusters can only be understood when studying their dynamics over time (Audretsch and Feldman 1996; Pouder and St. John 1996; Swann et al. 1998; Maggioni 2002; Brenner 2004; Iammarino and McCann 2006; Menzel and Fornahl 2010; Ter Wal and Boschma 2011). In fact, clusters...