A fast‐emerging theme in industrial relations research is that industrial relations systems in West European countries are undergoing decentralization, and that the most effective way for unions to meet this challenge is to “go local” themselves. Argues that the significance and...

In recent years, economic geographers have seized on the concepts of 'path dependence' and 'lock-in' as key ingredients in constructing an evolutionary approach to their subject. However, they have tended to invoke these notions without proper examination of the ongoing discussion and debate...

Over the past 25 years, the USA has pioneered a new technological revolution, based on large numbers of new small enterprises, financed by a dynamic venture (risk) capital market. The European Union, meanwhile, has lagged behind in this sector of economic activity, and compared to the US...

Over the past decade, there has been growing interest in local industrial agglomeration and specialization, not only by economic geographers but also by economists and by policy-makers. Of the many ideas and concepts to have emerged from this new-found focus, Michael Porter's work on 'clusters'...

The issue of ‘equity gaps’ has loomed large in recent discussions of enterprise formation and development, both in the United Kingdom and in Germany. One particularly intriguing, but highly elusive, aspect of this issue is the question of whether equity gaps have a regional dimension: are...

Geographers have recently argued that labour-market regulation interacts with market forces in profoundly different ways in different local labour markets. We illustrate this argument by using the case of the new statutory minimum wage in Britain. We consider whether the introduction of the...