Local industrial clusters, such as Silicon Valley in the United States, have become an important subject of scholarly inquiry in recent years. This book offers a unifying view by capturing the general characteristics and prerequisites of local industrial clusters both on a theoretical as well as an empirical level.
The book establishes a mathematical model to analyze the dynamics of clustering and the conditions that are to be satisfied if a local industrial cluster is to evolve. This model allows predictions about the spatial distribution of firms to be deducted, which are empirically tested in the book. This thorough methodology allows the author to postulate upon whether the number of local clusters that emerge in an industry is random, or whether it is predetermined.
An impressive scholarly exercise, this book also contains important policy lessons. As such, "Local Industrial Clusters" will be a valuable read for policy-makers as well as academics.

The key approach taken in this book is that all local economic clusters have something in common - specific case-studies are thus put into wider perspective in a masterly study that will be of keen interest to both economists and geographers.