NORTH CAROLINA ECONOMIST OFFERS PREDICTION ON HOW CHANGES IN GLOBAL MARKETS WILL AFFECT ECONOMIC GROWTH IN CITIES

NORTH CAROLINA ECONOMIST OFFERS PREDICTION ON HOW CHANGES IN GLOBAL MARKETS WILL AFFECT ECONOMIC GROWTH IN CITIES

http://www.ebookstand.com/cities.html

   Citing the wide-spread adoption of new information communication technologies (ICT) by the largest global corporations as the primary reason for fast product life cycles, Thomas E. Vass, a private economic development consultant in Raleigh, predicts that some cities will suffer a loss of economic vitality in their core industrial clusters.
   "The key to future prosperity," said Vass, "is for elected leaders in metro regions to facilitate maximum rates of technical progress, which occurs primarily in small, locally-owned, highly automated manufacturing plants." Vass cites a relationship between global corporations and metro regions, based upon a common need for technical change.
In his recently published book, Do Cities Still Matter? The Regional Geographical Imperative of Technological Progress In A Global Inter-Networked Market, Vass explains the relationship between technical change and economic growth with the assistance of a new economic theory.
"The prevailing theory of neo-classical general equilibrium offers interesting explanations for price movements in an existing, static period of time," Vass explained. "The older theory has some weaknesses, however, in trying to explain and predict how technical change affects economic growth in future periods of time, and it is particularly weak in its application to issues related to regional economic growth."
His new theory uses two elements of science not normally associated with economics. One element concerns the history and social/business networks in a region that tend to place the regional economy on a "technological trajectory." Some relationships in a region are committed to the status quo, and thus inhibit technical change. Vass uses the example of North Carolina's economy in the eastern part of the state, where the social/business networks were able to maintain the status quo in a way that inhibited economic change. "The entire region is now tied to the dying industrial sectors of tobacco, textiles, and farming," said Vass.
The other element of his new theory involves using input-output models of a regional economy to describe technological relationships among firms. In the past, input-output, as a method of economic investigation, has primarily been used to predict the impacts of economic changes in the region. Vass deploys the models to explain the "structural relationships," among firms, especially those firms that share certain buyer-seller relationships for semi-processed goods.
When these two elements are combined, Vass labels the result, "Structural Evolutionary Regional Economic Theory, or SERET, for short. "SERET not only offers interesting explanations of the relationship between technical change and economic growth," said Vass, "but also offers practical policy guidance to elected leaders on strategies for promoting new venture creation in the region's core industrial clusters."
Vass is the president of Regional Venture Capital Resources, LLC, an economic development consulting company, located in Raleigh, N. C.

For further information see: http://www.ebookstand.com/cities.html or contact Tom Vass at tvass@bellsouth.net