Related Variety and Regional Development: A Critique

Abstract

Evolutionary approaches in economic geography have contributed substantially to the growing body of knowledge of regional development processes and their underlying mechanisms. One key concept in the literature on evolutionary economic geography is that of related variety. Herein, regional industry structure is represented through the level of related variety of technologies, skills, or outputs. The related variety concept proposes that regional economic development is favored when an economy diversifies into products or technologies that are closely related to the stock of existing activities. In this article, we raise substantive questions regarding the internal logic of the concept of related variety, its spatial expressions, measurement specifics, empirical regularities and biases, and its possible short- and long-term effects on regional development. Based on this investigation, we make suggestions for improvements to future research.