The rise and fall of urban economies: lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles
本书通过对比旧金山和洛杉矶自1970年以来的收入差距，论证区域经济增长取决于企业及社会网络的变化能力，为区域发展研究提供了新理论。
The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies is destined to become a classic in economic geography and beyond. Building on the analysis of urban development that Michael Storper advanced in Keys to the City (2013), Storper and his coauthors, Thomas Kemeny, Naji Makarem and Taner Osman, ask here why economic growth in the San Francisco region has outpaced development in greater Los Angeles. They argue convincingly that regional economic growth depends on the capacity for change in firms and in civic and economic networks. For regional development scholars, the book arguably accomplishes what Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail (2012) did for comparative national development. Storper et al. provide a sweeping literature review and redefine the research agenda of regional economic development and economic geography, while advancing a compelling new theory of regional growth. Storper et al. make the volume accessible by presenting readers with a puzzling regional economic development question. What explains the income divergence since 1970 between the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles regions? At first glance Storper et al.’s choice of a ‘most similar cases’ research design might seem underwhelming. Los Angeles is not a Pittsburgh to be contrasted with New York (Chinitz, 1961), an Albuquerque as a foil for Seattle (Moretti, 2012) or a North Korea to contrast with South Korea (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012).