View article

S TORPER M.(1993) Regional “World” of production: learning and innovation in the technology districts of France, Italy and the USA, Reg. Studies 27, 433–455. This paper investigates and compares the social relations and institutions at the regional level that underpin technologically dynamic, export-oriented production networks in France, Italy and the USA. Localized rules, institutions and practices are key both to their geographical concentration and their technological pertormance. A model of the conventions which co-ordinate economic actors' collective identities and their modes of interaction, or what is called “economic participation”, is built, showing that patterns of geographical concentration and specific forms of innovation are linked to the conventions which define economic identity and participation at the regional level.