关联视角下的区域产业动态研究进展与反思

区域产业动态是经济地理学的经典研究主题。不同尺度的传统经济地理研究常以企业、产业和区域为研究对象,忽略了不同个体之间的关联。近年来,经济地理学增加了关于企业关联的研究,但对于产业关联和区域关联的关注仍显不足。基于关联视角,本文首先围绕产业关联和区域关联等概念探讨了关联的形成机制,进一步梳理关于产业关联、区域关联与区域产业动态的研究进展,并为未来区域产业动态研究提出相关建议。与企业关联相同,产业和区域关联也与个体间的要素流动有关。现有研究表明产业关联有助于揭示区域产业演化规律,而区域关联会通过区域间要素流动影响区域产业动态。关联视角是区域产业动态研究的新视角,具有较大的研究潜力,值得引起经济地理学者们的关注。

The regional industrial dynamics from the perspective of relatedness

Chinese economic development has experienced a rapid transformation since 1978 due to the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy. Arguably the research of regional industry dynamics is at the core of economic geography. Traditional researches in economic geography tend to focus on individuals such as firms, industries and regions, ignoring the relationship between them. Over the past few years, much progress has been made in researches on the relatedness of firms, while the relatedness of industries and regions is still not paid sufficient attentions. From the perspective of relatedness, this paper attempts to shed some light on the linkages of industries and regions, and explore their formation mechanisms. It puts forward that the translocal linkages and resource mobilization on different scales are sources of the relatedness of firms, industries and regions. In addition, this paper also sketches out how industrial relatedness and regional relatedness influences regional industrial dynamics. As for industrial relatedness, evolutionary economic geography (EEG) theories based on a network model named the "product space" have adopted a view that regional spillovers from related, yet not too proximate industries will endogenously induce new industries in a region through processes of recombinatorial innovation. The vast majority of empirical case studies have confirmed these theories. Regional industrial dynamics has thus far largely been conceptualized as an endogenous process, underplaying exogenously-driven forms of regional relatedness. Then, this paper provides a systematic conceptual analysis of the role regional relatedness may play for industrial dynamics in regions. Good connections between the regions improve matching on labour markets, speeding up knowledge flows and plausibly fostering learning which will contribute to the reciprocal industrial dynamics of geographically distant regions. Accordingly, this paper argues that future studies can further investigate the regional development from a relatedness perspective: (1) pay more attention to the industrial relatedness, such as its indirect links, link strengths and industrial relatedness dynamics; (2) enhance the understanding of the properties of regional relatedness and draw on network analysis approaches; (3) forge a link between industrial relatedness and regional relatedness. Emanated from different disciplines, the new perspective of relatedness in the study of regional industry dynamics provides a sound basis for understanding China's special development path and deserves the attention of economic geography scholars. Besides, there is rapidly expanding various data of relatedness which will make the perspective of relatedness more potential in the future.