Contents I. Introduction
The geographic concentration of economic activity has been of interest to scholars ever since Marshall [50], alluding to collectively held industry knowledge, remarked that there was “steel in the air” in Sheffield while documenting industrial districts, now commonly referred to as technology clusters. Globalization, the emergence of the Internet, and other advancements in communications technology and transportation logistics, however, have led some scholars to proclaim that firm location has become increasingly less important [9]. Because firms are now more than ever in a position to source inputs globally, location must be diminishing in importance when attempting to explain firm-level competitive advantage. Proponents of this theory suggest that this line of reasoning is especially salient in high-technology sectors like semiconductors, medical devices, or biotechnology, where the critical production inputs are financial, intellectual, and human capital. Some of the key production inputs for these high-technology industries tend to be either intangible (e.g., intellectual capital) or have the ability to cross spatial distance without incurring significant transaction costs (e.g., financial capital). Even human capital, particularly scientists and engineers, has exhibited significant geographic mobility in recent decades [13]. For these reasons, spatial agglomeration should have become less important, especially for high-technology industries.
