This paper seeks to reconcile evaluative practice with theory, focusing on the micro-evaluation of UK regional industrial policy. Two issues are examined: the measurement of the pecuniary external effects, including displacement and linkages; and the concept of 'additionality', which is central...

The paper analyses the existence and efficiency of discretionary industrial assistance schemes under asymmetric information between an uninformed government and a uniform distribution of firms with differing productivities. Discretionary assistance allows the government to scrutinise projects in...

The article reviews the recent developments in UK competitiveness policy, and explores its relationship with industrial policy, including regional industrial policy. It argues that competitiveness is virtually synonymous with productivity growth, but that while four Competitiveness White Papers...

Agglomeration economies reflect proximity and are an important explanation for industrial location. They feature prominently in the theories of location, including intermediate inputs and labour of the new economic geography and knowledge spillovers in the new growth theory. However, while there...

<title>ABSTRACT</title> This paper analyses the location of foreign direct investment across the regions of Great Britain over 1985--2005 using the framework of discretized Markov chains. FDI is measured according to the regional share of inward investment projects, where a distinction is made between...

The paper examines the relative importance for industrial location of production linkages and knowledge spillovers, distinguishing between intermediate and non-intermediate goods that are backwards or forwards in nature. A novel approach is used to construct proxies for non-intermediate goods at...

The paper decomposes a geographical concentration index to examine the temporal scope of a spillover, which is the period of time over which one firm’s activity directly affects the location of other firms’ activities. Natural advantages are fixed over reasonably long time periods, but if...

The provision of financial assistance to industry has formed a growing and important part of the economic development policies of many local authorities. However, assessments of these policies have suffered from a number of drawbacks. In particular, they have tended to focus on the employment...