A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

Robert Huggins is Chair of Economic Geography and Director of Research at the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, as well as the Director of Cardiff University's Cities Research Centre. His research interests and expertise concern urban and regional economic development, in particular the study of behaviour, culture, competitiveness, knowledge flows, entrepreneurship, innovation, clusters, and inter-organizational networks. He has published more than eighty articles in peer-reviewed journals and authored or edited five books. Piers Thompson is Professor of Economics at Nottingham Business School and Deputy Unit of Assessment Coordinator at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University. His research interests include behavioural economics, choice and welfare, and economic competitiveness, with a focus on spatial economics and understanding geographic differences in development, culture, entrepreneurship, network behaviour, and economic growth. He is a review board member of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research and has published over forty peer-reviewed journal articles.

• 1: Introduction: Behaviour and the Development Problem 2: Human Behaviour and the Development of Cities and Regions 3: The Psychocultural Life of Cities and Regions 4: Agency, Economic Evolution, and History 5: Institutions, Capital, and Network Behaviour 6: The Co-Evolution of Culture, Psychology, and Institutions 7: The Nature and Sources of Agency 8: Agency, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation 9: An Extended Behavioural Model of Economic Development 10: Addressing Unevenness

A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development can and should become a guide for researchers who want to give culture and agency the place they deserve in the study of urban and regional development. The volume extends our knowledge of individual and group behaviour with respect to regional development. And it stimulates one to look for the right methods, both quantitative and qualitative, to capture the cultural dimension of it in the best way