Tehnology Shift and Long term Growth in Regions

Abstract
The overarching aim of this paper is to investigate the importance of technological shifts and national macroeconomic preconditions for long term growth and structural transformation in various regions in a national regional system. Intrinsic to this, the issue and origin of divergence and convergence coming in repetitive waves in regional systems will be discussed as a possible contribution to the understanding of the sometimes amazing stability in the ranking of regions over time.
Our hypothesis is that the impact of technology shifts on long term growth and structural transformation in various regions in a national regional system is significant and extensive. New technological systems or techno-economic paradigms in combination with country specific macroeconomic conditions and the existing hierarchy of regions will largely determine for a long time which types of regions that will grow at different time periods and how dependencies and interdependencies between regions in a country’s regional system evolve over time.
In the empirical work, based on detailed analysis of the Swedish regional system between 1985 and 2008, we have showed that the technology shift have target various part of the regional system at different points of time setting the overall average agenda for growth and structural change for different levels of the regional system. Patterns of instability, turbulence and change leading to strong divergence between top and lower ranked regional groups have been identified as well as periods of convergence characterized by stability and catch up. Further on we have found that regions belonging to different level of the hierarchy tend to follow different “growth corridors” giving the basic precondition for regions to take advantage of the impact from the technology shift.