Europe has a long history as a global center of scientific research, but not all European regions are alike. Regions such as Île de France and the corridor that stretches from Cambridge to Oxford via London produce a disproportionate share of Europe’s science output. An econometric analysis sheds light on the factors that explain the spatial distribution of European science. One result is that the regional volume of Web of Science publications depends on the regional number of researchers in higher education institutions. This is however not the only cause of high output. Universities and their surrounding regions are slowly evolving institutional structures. Some regions host universities that are more than 500 years old. A second key result is that an increase in the age of a region’s oldest university is associated with greater output, other things being equal. Third, interregional accessibility via road, rail, and air networks is important for small regions, but not for large ones. Conversely, regional high-tech R&D employment is important for large but not for small regions.

A dynamic model that distinguishes between slow and fast processes shows that a triple helix model is impossible as a tool for promoting interdependencies among science, industry and government. We present a theorem to demonstrate that a triple helix strategy is logically impossible as a means of funding scientific research in universities. In spite of this logical impossibility, national and regional triple helix strategies to improve productivity and innovative capacity have been favoured by politicians of almost every ideological stripe. Coordination of science and industry by governments is not new; it harks back to the mercantilism of seventeenth-century Britain and France. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, triple helix policies have led to a short-term bias in favour of applied technological research. Several examples, ranging from the military use of scientists in World War II to Chinese high technology parks show how triple helix strategies tilt playing fields, suppress academic freedom0 and expose scientists to the whims of politicians.

Economic development spans centuries and continents. Underlying infrastructural causes of development, such as institutions and networks, are subject to slow but persistent change. Accumulated infrastructural changes eventually become so substantial that they trigger a phase transition. Such transitions disrupt the prior conditions for economic activities and network interdependencies, requiring radically transformed production techniques, organizations and location patterns. The interplay of economic equilibria and structural changes requires a theoretical integration of the slow time scale of infrastructural change and the fast time scale of market equilibration. This paper presents a theory that encompasses both rapidly and slowly changing variables and illustrates how infrequent phase transitions caused four logistical revolutions in Europe over the past millennium. 

A sustainable city combines stable long-term economic growth with a resilient ecological system. It is also a region of social sustainability with low levels of spatial segregation of different socio-economic groups. Spatial inclusion primarily involves provision of equalized city-wide access to territorial public goods. High durability of physical networks and buildings facilitates economic, environmental and social sustainability. This study shows that durability varies considerably between Asian, European and North American cities, with mean life expectancies of buildings that range from below 20 years in Chinese cities to over 100 years in European cities such as Paris. Urban planning principles that focus on the slow and steady expansion of accessibility and density within a durable built environment are consistent with general economic equilibria, while avoiding the pitfalls of political planning of the markets for private goods.

Production theory has remained substantially unchanged since the publication of the theory of production by Frisch (Theory of production, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1928; Nord613 Tidskr Tek Økon 1:12–27, 1935). The theory is based on the idea of a firm deciding on the possible input and output combinations of a single unit of production. His theory was substantially copied in contributions by Carlson (A study on the pure theory of production, University of Chicago, Chicago, 1939) and Schneider (Einführung in die Wirtschaftstheorie. 4 Bände, Mohr, Tübingen, 1947), and later by practically all textbooks in microeconomics. The idea is to model the firm as a “black box” in which a finite number of externally purchased inputs are transformed into a finite number of outputs to be sold in the market(s). Most of the time, the prices are externally determined. Often, the production process is summarized by some simplified production function as, for example, in the form of a CES function. Another and conceptually richer approach is the formulation of an activity analysis model. In the latter case, simple internal interdependencies can be included. In this paper, we indicate how internal interdependencies can also be modeled within a special CES framework. In recent decades, there has been a remarkable growth in the number of production units of firms such as IKEA, Walmart and Apple to name a few such global networking firms. Most of the analysis of these network firms has been modeled by logistics and other operations-research analysts (Simchi-Levi et al. 2008) and to a limited extent by researchers in business administration schools. Very little has been done in economics. We propose a modeling approach consistent with the microeconomic theory.