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This project aims to make a conceptual, methodological and empirical contribution to the burgeoning field of Evolutionary Perspectives in Economic Geography. To date, Evolutionary Perspectives have tended to underplay the role of the state and macro-institutions, and how notions of agency, power, and scale feature in the evolution of a regional economy. This thesis draws upon Geographical Political Economy to develop an Evolutionary Perspective that is more sensitive to these concerns. In particular, I have focussed on aspects of policy and governance in the long-term adaptation and resilience of old industrial regions coping with disruptive structural change. Based on the Path Dependency perspective – which within Evolutionary Perspectives seems best suited to theorise aspects of policy and governance - I have developed an analytical framework and detailed a methodology of ‘deep contextualisation’, to understand (1) how policies and institutions evolve over time, (2) what role they play in long-term adaptation and resilience, and (3) how this may be shaped by the wider institutional environment. This framework and methodology (with these three distinct levels of analysis) was subsequently used to study and compare two cases: the old steel regions of South Saarland in Germany, and Teesside in the United Kingdom. These regions both experienced a crisis in their economies in the 1970s and 1980s. South Saarland has been able to adapt successfully, whereas Teesside continues to struggle. The study presents compelling evidence that this has to a considerable extent been a result of (1) different priorities and consistency in the policies implemented, (2) the more robust governance arrangements present in South Saarland compared to Teesside, and (3) the federal government structure and more cooperative form of capitalism in Germany, which appears to have been more conducive for long-term resilience than the centralist structure and more liberal model in the United Kingdom.

China faces to a development dilemma and improving her sustainability is a relevant and significant issue in dealing with these problems. Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) is a practical tool that has a major opportunity to contribute to the sustainability of Chinese businesses. This is a study of the state of the art of EMA in two Chinese tourism companies and of the associated behavioural changes within the two companies. The study provides examples of the use of EMA in practice and identifies barriers and facilitators of EMA adoption in Chinese businesses. Overall the study provides insight into Chinese business sustainability that is essential for better sustainable performance in China herself. The qualitative data comprising documents, observations, interviews and questionnaires from the site visits are used to examine the environmental performance related to EMA adoption and is also used to provide detailed information about the people running EMA. Hence another focus in this study is an exploration and interpretation of the behavioural changes exhibited by the people running EMA in the Chinese context. Institution and Structuration theories are employed to help analysis and understand the data generated in the case studies. However, because of the impact of the traditional Chinese collective, “Guanxi” culture of a “Social-Authority Relations” that may have a significant affect individual choice and behaviour, additional philosophical and psychological are used to help interpret and reveal a holistic process of behavioural changes towards to sustainability in accordance with the understanding of Intrinsic Sustainable Development.

Sustainability is a key issue of the 21st century. A complexity and networks approach is taken to investigate what makes socio-economic systems sustainable, or not, and what lessons that can be learned from the sandpile model, an analogy of observed economic activity. The sandpile model has been studied extensively on regular lattices with coordination number K = 2. Here, the dynamics is generalised to evolve on less rigid networks. The regular lattice structure is relaxed by introducing an inter-layer distribution for the interactions between nodes. This forces the scaling exponent of the avalanche-size probability density function out of the two-dimensional directed sandpile universality class τ = 4/3, into the mean-field universality class τ = 3/2. An apparent drift in the exponents of the avalanches found in the Monte Carlo simulations on a lattice with K > 2 is attributed to the observed holes and side-branches of avalanche clusters, which leads to large corrections to scaling. The K = 3 case is solved analytically, proving that in fact the critical exponents for K > 2 are identical to the K = 2 case. The most realistic topology that can be used to model economic activity is the production-consumption network between firms in a real economy. A novel avalanche-size exponent τ ≈ 1.87, that falls outside the two known universality classes, emerges when the model evolves on the Japanese inter-firm network. This network has the typical bow-tie structure of a real-world directed network: in and out-layers, and a strongly connected component. The strongly connected component is not layered and displays a large range of network motifs. Randomly adding a small proportion of links between non-adjacent layers in one of the layered networks in the mean-field universality class, abruptly takes the system out of the mean-field regime with a non-trivial avalanche-size probability density function, which closely reproduces the behaviour observed on the real-world Japanese network.

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It is only in the last few years that researchers have started to investigate the impact of cultural characteristics on the approach nations take to addressing the demands of sustainable development. The basis of such work tends to resort to the use of frameworks that were developed by Hofstede and the GLOBE project. Rogge, Dessein, and and Verhoeve (2013) argue that research into subjects as complex as this should commence with work of a more exploratory nature. This thesis is multidisciplinary, and uses a variety of methods to provide that first exploration into the nature of this relationship. My review of literature reveals that there is general acceptance that paradigmatic change is necessary but that decision making, behaviour and politics all tend to “safer” incremental steps. Using systems theory to examine the nature of paradigm change I identify the potential scope of government influence. The remainder of my work concentrates on the development of case studies of Japan, Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom, focussing on the manner in which the governments concerned support small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) within the country in developing more sustainable practices. I use these case studies to identify the impact of culture. I find that the cultural dimension as defined in classic frameworks is not the pertinent issue, but the nation is likely to be sensitive to environmental demands if the environmental damage impinges on areas of their life that they value. If there are characteristics within the nation that provide for care and support then action is more likely to be taken. The other characteristics necessary to see through financing such action are perserverence and a long-term view. My other finding is that the use of statistical analysis and frameworks of cultural characteristics is problematic in that they both simplify a subject that should be understood in all its complexity.

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This thesis contains three empirical studies on different facets of development economics. Two of the chapters specifically focus on Benin, a country that has not often been studied in the development literature. The first of these studies is an investigation into the sustainability of Beninese Rotating Savings and Credit Associations. Work such as Besley et al. (1993) or Anderson et al. (2009) has questioned how such groups can overcome the incentives for individuals to default, theorising that the institutional design of the groups can play an important role. Using household survey data collected in 2004 and 2006, chapter 2 presents a first test into many of the theories outlined in the theoretical literature. The second study examines primary school attendance rates in Benin. Despite almost unparalleled increases in attendance rates since 1990, the country has remained virtually ignored in the literature. The study, found in chapter 3, attempts to improve on existing related studies by employing a multilevel model in order to account for higher level variance in the data. The results help to shed light on the stark regional disparities in attendance that continue to exist across Benin’s 77 communes. Finally, chapter 4 uses the recently released ICTD-UNU WIDER Government Revenue Dataset in order to revisit some recent results on the relationship between tax structures and economic growth. Recent work in this field has offered little or no evidence for developing countries, yet it is in such countries where the greatest changes in tax structure have not only been seen over the past 30 years but will likely be seen in coming years. The study examines the impact of revenue neutral changes in tax structure on per capita GDP growth rates. Results suggest that previous findings are not applicable to countries at all levels of development and as such urge caution with regard to some recent policy advice that is based on previous findings.