Michael Storper Libros

Today, the Bay Area is home to the most successful knowledge economy in America, while Los Angeles has fallen progressively further behind its neighbor to the north and a number of other American metropolises. Yet, in 1970, experts would have predicted that L.A. would outpace San Francisco in population, income, economic power, and influence. The usual factors used to explain urban growth—luck, immigration, local economic policies, and the pool of skilled labor—do not account for the contrast between the two cities and their fates. So what does? The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies challenges many of the conventional notions about economic development and sheds new light on its workings. The authors argue that it is essential to understand the interactions of three major components—economic specialization, human capital formation, and institutional factors—to determine how well a regional economy will cope with new opportunities and challenges. Drawing on economics, sociology, political science, and geography, they argue that the economic development of metropolitan regions hinges on previously underexplored capacities for organizational change in firms, networks of people, and networks of leaders. By studying San Francisco and Los Angeles in unprecedented levels of depth, this book extracts lessons for the field of economic development studies and urban regions around the world.

In Institutions, incentives and communication in economic geography, delivered as the prestigious Hettner Lectures at the University of Heidelberg in 2003, Michael Storper presents a challenging perspective on two key issues within contemporary economic and geographical debate. In his first lecture, Storper reconsiders some of the foundations of comparative economics and institutionalism in an analysis of the “societal” and “communitarian” bases of social and economic development. Arguing that the interaction between society and community defines critical incentives for actors, Storper suggests a context-sensitive sociological framework for the institutional analysis of economic development. The second lecture focuses on urban economics and argues that existing models of urban concentrations are incomplete unless grounded in a more precise understanding of the most fundamental aspect of proximity, face-to-face contact. Finally, a biographical interview revisits key geographical sites and theoretical concepts in Storper’s development as one of the world’s leading economic geographers.