The three cluster notions above may coexist since local markets, local transaction links, and local social networks can be integrated in various combinations into functional regions. Thus, even if it is possible to analytically distinguish three “pure” cluster models, it is important to realise that industrial clusters in reality often exhibit rich but complicated and integrated features, many of which may be difficult to create or influence by policy measures. Many industrial clusters are unique and the result of specific historical circumstances. Cluster models give little guidance for the development of such clusters, since they are the result of specific circumstances, which are more or less impossible to imitate.
CHAPTER 6: Cluster Policies
Cluster policies are currently a hot topic. Policy makers in many countries at both the national and the regional level have come to believe that supporting and creating clusters is the major option to be competitive and to be a winner in the globalisation race (Maillat, 1998; Lagendijk & Cornford, 2000; Lundvall, 2002). A search on the concept “cluster policy” using Google in October 2006 gave about 38,500 hits. Certainly, there is a strong need for a thorough discussion of cluster policies and not least the rationale for cluster policies. In many countries at the national, as well as at the regional and local level cluster development has become the solution to economic development. However, in many cases, cluster development seems to be based on no or very limited analysis. Clusters are found and identified without any clear criteria. When criteria are used, they are often very simple, such as location quotients. Still worse, there is often very little analysis of what factors that gave rise to the emergence of clusters, the factors keeping them together, the long-term prospects of the clusters, the fundamental reasons motivating political intervention, the problems of applying cluster policies.
Existing clusters can often be efficiently supported by policies. Stimulating emergence of new clusters is substantially more complicated. Having witnessed the success of a limited number of successful high-tech clusters many regions want to initiate and nurture their own high-tech clusters. This is often done with little and mostly superficial analysis. Often the initiatives to create new clusters are based upon rather simple imitation strategies, which severely underestimate the difficulties of launching new clusters. The difficulties are real since research has had rather little help to offer concerning the necessary and sufficient conditions for successful
launching of new clusters.
Clusters contribute positively to real income levels in regions. This has important implications for regional development polices. However, it is not obvious what the implications are and how cluster policies should be designed (Karlsson & Stough, 2002). What type of regional cluster policy to apply depends on
1. type of cluster(s),
2. actual degree of cluster formation in the region, and
3. information and knowledge about existing clusters and cluster policies possessed by relevant political authorities.
In the ideal case, policy measures should be directed towards the causes of the problem to be solved. It is important to realise that externalities, which stimulate cluster formation is a sign of what is called a market failure. This holds irrespectively of the externalities are pecuniary or technological. In traditional economic welfare theory, the existence of market failures has generally been taken as a motivation for political interference. However, this view has become more nuanced in recent decades. Political interference is associated with its own costs and these costs must be weighted against the benefits from removed or reduced market failures.
In the case of technological externalities, market failure is obvious. The individual firm has no incentives in its calculations to consider the positive (negative) effects for other firms of its own activities. Thus, the individual firm will not consider the value of its own activities for the cluster and for the overall national economy. This condition implies that, for example, private companies in a market economy regularly under-invest in R&D, since it does not consider the value for other firms of its knowledge creation.
Pecuniary externalities on the other hand are market failures connected with scale economies or imperfect competition. The utilization of sc原文请找腾讯752018766优,文-论'文.网http://www.youerw.com ale economies, the supply of products, and the degree of competition are all limited by the size of the market potential. If more customers enter the market or if suppliers better can access distant markets this limitation is reduced and a socioeconomic benefit arises through lower unit costs, a wider supply of products and/or increased competition. Thus, it is not the pecuniary externalities as such, which represent market failure. It is just a symptom of a market failure, which comes from the production conditions (scale economies) or the market form (imperfect competition).
Certain market failures due to externalities can be avoided if the effects can be internalised, e.g. if the firms in a cluster decide to coordinate their activities through a common ownership or through contractual arrangements. Cluster firms can also organise themselves and work jointly to get more firms and/or household to locate in the region to increase the market potential of the region, if the size of the market potential is too small for positive pecuniary externalities to be realised. There are, in fact, plenty of examples of the role that private sector leadership can play for cluster
initiation and cluster development (Stimson, Stough & Roberts, 2002). However, if the number of economic actors is large it might be impossible to achieve