Related Variety, Unrelated Variety and Regional Economic Growth

Related Variety, Unrelated Variety and Technological Breakthroughs: An analysis of US State-Level Patenting

We investigate how variety affects the innovation output of a region. Borrowing arguments from theories of recombinant innovation, we expect that related variety will enhance innovation as related technologies are more easily recombined into a new technology. However, we also expect that unrelated variety enhances technological breakthroughs, since radical innovation often stems from connecting...

Regional inequality and product variety∗

We investigate how differences in set-up costs of various types affect the trade-off between global efficiency and spatial equity and show that the standard assumption of symmetry in fixed costs masks the existence of an interesting effect: the range of available varieties varies depends on the spatial distribution of firms. In such a setting, even when the market outcome leads to excessive agg...

Economic variety control and modularity

Since the industry revolution, companies have tried to standardize more their components, in order to allow mass production and to increase components’ commonality between products. To remain competitive, companies always have to offer more variety to customers. Manufacturers of complex assembled products that are facing the challenge of mass customization are forced to increase simultaneously ...

The Pawpaw Regional Variety Trial

The pawpaw [Asimina triloba (L.) Dunal, Annonaceae] tree produces the largest edible tree fruit native to the United States (Darrow 1975; Layne 1996). This fruit, known commonly as the “poor man’s banana,” may reach up to 1 kg in size. Pawpaws grow wild in the mesic hardwood forests of 26 states in the eastern United States, ranging from northern Florida to southern Ontario (Canada) and as far ...

Variety Growth and World Welfare