The capability framework in evolutionary economic geography views regional economic development as a process of related diversification through the acquisition of capabilities that render a regional economy more complex. Using this framework, we synthesize seven theoretical notions that hitherto remained rather disconnected: relatedness, complementarity, variety, complexity, diversification, agents of structural change and related variety. We formulate a constructive critique of the capability framework, relaxing the overly restrictive assumption that the presence of capabilities in a region is both necessary and sufficient for complex products to be produced in a region. Instead, we argue that the complexity of a regional economy depends primarily on the institutions that support firms to coordinate production in complex value chains within and across regions. The augmented framework allows for closer integration of evolutionary and relational approaches in economic geography, providing new links between the literature on clusters, innovation systems and global production networks.

中文翻译：

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能力、机构和区域经济发展：拟议综合

演化经济地理学的能力框架将区域经济发展视为通过获取使区域经济变得更加复杂的能力而实现相关多元化的过程。利用这个框架，我们综合了迄今为止仍然相当脱节的七个理论概念：相关性、互补性、多样性、复杂性、多样化、结构变化的推动者和相关多样性。我们对能力框架提出了建设性的批评，放松了过度限制性的假设，即一个地区能力的存在对于在一个地区生产复杂产品来说既是必要的又是充分的。反而，我们认为，区域经济的复杂性主要取决于支持企业协调区域内和区域间复杂价值链生产的机构。增强的框架允许经济地理学中的进化和关系方法更紧密地结合，在集群、创新系统和全球生产网络的文献之间提供新的联系。