Exploring innovation gaps in the American space economy

Abstract

This chapter explores disparities in urban innovation, in the context of the history of city systems and advanced urban economies. The overall innovative index of metropolitan economies is estimated by first generating its score on each of the latent dimensions and then adding up those performance scores across all of the dimensions. The results produced a clear set of innovation centers, spread evenly across the United States. Not only do these findings square with contemporary theory on agglomeration economies, as explained by Mulligan et al. (Ann Reg Sci 48:405–431, 2012), they line up nicely with older, less behaviorally motivated theories of central place hierarchies. The paper concludes with a discussion of the main challenges facing regional science in the research areas of innovation and urban growth.