Book review Evolutionary Economic Geography: Theoretical and Empirical Progress

Back in 2006, Ron Boschma and Koen Frenken published a seminal paper in which they raised the following question: “why is economic geography not an evolutionary science?” (Boschma and Frenken, 2006). In this paper, they argued that some of the most promising advances in economic geography were already embedded in evolutionary thinking, playing out at the interface of the two divergent approaches – neoclassical and institutional – which traditionally formed the stepping stones of research in the field. Hence, beyond just looking at place-based (uneven) economic dynamics, evolutionary economic geography (EEG) sought to actually identify and examine the factors underpinning those dynamics utilising an evolutionary framework. Since then, EEG has become a highly influential research paradigm in economic geography while permeating other fields such as regional economics, innovation studies and local and regional development.