Flexible Production Theories for Addressing the Regional Disparities

Flexible Production Theories for Addressing the Regional Disparities

Montesclaros, Jose Ma. Luis P.

Author Note:

The manuscript is being submitted to Dr. Yumin Joo on 2 September 2012, in

partial fulfilment of Policy Memo requirements for the course Urban Development

and Policy. While it focuses on the implications of the flexible production theories on

regional-development, it also seeks to answer the questions in the syllabus for Week

4: The post-Fordist economy in the process. This is done in an essay format. It ends

with a question which the author hopes can be tackled in class.

The author is a graduate student at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy,

National University of Singapore. He may be contacted via e-mail at

jmlmontesclaros@nus.edu.sg or louiepm@gmail.com for inquiries and clarifications.

Fordists, early theorists in urban economic development, posited that said

development is deterministic, or “path-dependent” (Henderson, Shanizi and Venables,

1997). Agglomeration economies (such as localization economies and economies of

scale) are theorized to completely explain the economic development of cities;

moreover, progressive cities which already possess high quantities of a diversified

capital and labor are expected to continue to achieve higher levels of economic

growth than those without these in the long-run. History, however, has shown that

cities with agglomeration economies have been bested by cities with less of these,

because the latter are said to possess a continuous drive for product innovation

(Jacobs, 1969), as explained in the product-cycle theory. Cities then constantly

explore markets to penetrate, and backward cities can form new partnerships with

other backward cities which allow both parties to create products that will respond to

the needs of other cities, at lower costs because these build on the available resources

of any city. Therefore, backwardness at any period, no longer leads to the...