Technology policies and the growth of regions: Evidence from four countries

Since the 1980s, all industrialized countries have established technology policies aimed at increasing economic growth through the development of scientific and technical resources. Most technology policy initiates are at the national level and are predominantly concerned with levels of funding. This is a problem because high-tech industrial development is observed to be regional in nature and national technology policies do not explicitly pursue regional goals. This paper tests two hypotheses. First, that the different explicit and implicit technology policies have had a significant, although unintended, impact on the development of a special type of space, the high-tech regions. Next, that the spatial effects of government technology policy promote high-tech regions over other regions, although this influence is primarily of an implicit or unintended nature.