A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development The Uneven Evolution of Cities and Regions Huggins Full Chapter

A Behavioural Theory of Economic
Development: The Uneven Evolution of

Cities and Regions Huggins
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/a-behavioural-theory-of-economic-development-the-u
neven-evolution-of-cities-and-regions-huggins/
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 02/12/20, SPi
A Behavioural Theory of Economic

Development
A Behavioural Theory of
Economic Development
The Uneven Evolution of Cities and Regions
Robert Huggins and Piers Thompson
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Robert Huggins and Piers Thompson 2021
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944368
ISBN 978–0–19–883234–8
DOI : 10.1093/oso/9780198832348.001.0001
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
To Angela, from Rob

and
To Wenyu, from Piers
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
1. Introduction: Behaviour and the Development Problem 1
2. Human Behaviour and the Development of Cities and Regions 15
3. The Psychocultural Life of Cities and Regions 35
4. Agency, Economic Evolution, and History 59
5. Institutions, Capital, and Network Behaviour 89
6. The Co-evolution of Culture, Psychology, and Institutions 113
7. The Nature and Sources of Agency 157
8. Agency, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation 191
9. An Extended Behavioural Model of Economic Development 217
10. Addressing Unevenness 241
References 257
Index 299
List of Figures
2.1. Behavioural agency matrix 28

2.2. A behavioural framework for analysing urban and regional development 32
3.1. Psychocultural behavioural profiles by local authority area 53
4.1. Behavioural sources of positive and negative regional lock-in 73
5.1. Theoretical perspectives on regional innovation and growth 90
5.2. Regional growth systems—key components 94
5.3. Networks of firms and organizations by UK region 100
5.4. Institutions—Quality of Government across the UK 106
5.5. New theoretical perspectives on regional innovation and growth 110
6.1. Links between personality and community culture at the urban and
regional level 129
6.2. Distribution of emancipation values across European NUTS1 regions 138
6.3. Distribution of emancipation sub-indices across European NUTS1 regions 139
6.4. Distribution of secular values across European NUTS1 regions 140
6.5. Distribution of secular sub-indices across European NUTS1 regions 141
6.6. Inward internal migration patterns across UK localities by
psychocultural profile 149
6.7. Outward internal migration patterns across UK localities by
6.8. Net internal migration patterns across UK localities by
7.1. Political agency potential across European regions 167
7.2. Environmental agency potential across European regions 168
7.3. Labour/entrepreneurial agency potential across European regions 168
8.1. The influence of community culture on the personality–self-employment
relationship196
9.1. An extended behavioural model of urban and regional development 236
List of Tables
4.1. Agents of innovation, transformation, and development for a cross

section of cities and regions 69
4.2. Agents of innovation, transformation, and development in Manchester
1760–183071
4.3. Agents of innovation, transformation, and development in Glasgow
1770–189072
5.1. General features of economic growth systems in high- and low-growth
cities of the UK 105
5.2. Index of Quality of Government by UK region 107
6.1. Personality trait measures 118
6.2. Culture measures 124
6.3. Multilevel regression of aggregate values on psychocultural profiles 144
6.4. Multilevel regression of sub-indices of emancipative values on
psychocultural profiles 146
6.5. Multilevel regression of sub-indices of secular values on psychocultural
profiles147
6.6. Origins and destinations of migrants across UK localities by inclusive
amenability psychocultural profile 152
6.7. Origins and destinations of migrants across UK localities by individual
commitment psychocultural profile 153
6.8. Origins and destinations of migrants across UK localities by diverse
extraversion psychocultural profile 154
7.1. Initial principal components analysis of HAP and behavioural changes 165
7.2. Reduced principal components analysis of HAP and behavioural changes 166
7.3. Correlation matrix for different forms of agency 171
7.4. Correlation matrix for political and labour agency measures 172
7.5. Correlation matrix for agency and values 174
7.6. Regressions of HAP on post-materialism 178
7.7. Regressions of HAP on values 180
7.8. Logit regressions of human agency actualization for entrepreneurial/labour
change behaviours 187
8.1. Proportion of self-employed by whether personality traits are above or
below the mean 199
xii List of Tables
8.2. Proportion of self-employed by whether community culture dimensions

are above or below the mean 200
8.3. Regressions of self-employment on Engagement with Education and
Employment, and Extraversion 201
8.4. Negative binominal regressions of entrepreneurial employment 208
8.5. Correlation coefficients for Labour/Entrepreneurial Agency Potential and
economic development/ HAA measures 211
8.6. Pearson correlation coefficients for the REDI and HAP 214
9.1. Ordered logit regressions of economic, financial, and political outcomes 223
9.2. Ordered logit regressions of social outcomes, health, and well-being 227
1
Introduction
Behaviour and the Development Problem
1.1 The Motivation and Rationale for the Book
This book is motivated by a belief that theories of economic development

can move beyond the generally known factors and mechanisms of such
development, with the aim being to analyse deeper and more fundamental
causes of uneven development. In particular, influences such as innovation,
entrepreneurship, knowledge, and human capital are widely acknowledged as
key levers of development and are essentially some of the major components
underlying Schumpeter’s (1934) enduringly influential book on ‘The Theory
of Economic Development’. However, what are the sources of these factors,
and why do they differ in their endowment across places? Principally, this
book seeks to theoretically argue and to empirically illustrate that differences
in human behaviour across cities and regions are a significant deep-rooted
cause of uneven development. Fusing a range of concepts relating to culture,
psychology, human agency, institutions, and power, it proposes that the uneven
economic development and evolution of cities and regions within and across
nations are strongly connected with the underlying forms of behaviour
enacted by humans both individually and collectively.
Integrating theoretical and empirical analysis, this study addresses a clear
intellectual gap in terms of making sense of the components and elements
that lead to long-term differentials in economic development, particularly at
the city and regional level. Following Nelson and Winter’s (1982) landmark
publication An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, the process and
dynamics of economic development are widely acknowledged to pursue
evolutionary pathways resulting from particular forms of individual and
organizational behaviour. However, both ‘traditional’ and so-called ‘alterna-
tive’ theories of economic development continue to pay little attention to the
role of human behaviour in shaping economic evolution and change, par-
ticularly within a spatial context (Reinert et al., 2016). This is surprising
given that human behaviour and the urban and regional economies in which
A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development: The Uneven Evolution of Cities and Regions. Robert Huggins and Piers
Thompson, Oxford University Press (2021). © Robert Huggins and Piers Thompson.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198832348.003.0001
2 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development
individuals are situated are fundamentally intertwined. The problem for

scholars and policy analysts is that such behaviour does not easily fit into
existing economic frameworks (Granovetter, 2017).
Urban and regional development theory is largely rooted in explanations
based on the location, agglomeration and organization of firms, industries,
and capital. While the field of economics has begun to embrace behaviour-
ism, economic geography appears to have largely adhered to Sauer’s (1941: 7)
contention that ‘Human geography . . ., unlike psychology and history, is a
science that has nothing to do with individuals but only with human institu-
tions or culture’. As Pred (1967) pointed out some years later, divorcing culture
or institutions at the spatial level from the behaviour of individuals is logically
a contradiction, since individual behaviour necessarily contributes to the
formation and differences in these cultures and institutions. Indeed, the for-
mation and subsequent outcomes of individual or collective behavioural
action, or what can be termed human agency, are a central feature of our the-
sis, and one of the intellectual contributions it seeks to make is to provide a
greater and more systematic understanding of the role of individual and col-
lective behaviour in determining urban and regional development outcomes.
Given a world of finite and limited resources, coupled with a rapidly grow-
ing population—especially in cities and urban regions—human behaviour,
and the expectations and preferences upon which it is based, would appear
to be central for understanding how notions of development may change in
coming years. In other words, the ‘prosperity’ associated with ‘development’
may come in different forms as values evolve, challenges change, and new
opportunities emerge (Jackson, 2017). New economic and social frameworks
are likely to form to address this evolution, especially frameworks based on
understanding micro-level behaviour, and a key argument within this book
is that the city or region in which individuals are situated will be deeply con-
nected with their economic behaviour. Essentially, cities and regions shape
behaviour, which itself subsequently impacts upon the economic develop-
ment fortunes of these places, especially over the long term.
An underlying rationale of this approach is to address the fact that uneven
development across cities and regions is a global phenomenon (Prager and
Thisse, 2012), with the world now witnessing what Myrdal (1957) presciently
described as the ‘drift toward regional economic inequalities’. In general, the
historical evolution of cities and regions tends to be a story of gradually
growing economic divergence across territorial boundaries, and the emer-
gence of a limited number of urban and regional superpowers. In the Britain
of 1891, for example, the region of Wales generated economic output per
capita that equated to 96.2 per cent of the national average; similarly, in the
Introduction 3
East Midlands output per capita was equal to 96.4 per cent of the British
average (Crafts, 2004). By 2017, output per capita in Wales was only 72.2 per
cent of the average, and 79.3 per cent of the average in the East Midlands. By
contrast, London’s output per capita increased from 150.4 per cent in 1891 to
177.3 per cent in 2017, with regions in close proximity to the capital seeing
similar rates of economic development.
Such evolutionary trends can also be observed elsewhere, and in some
cases the speed of divergence has become ever more rapid. For example, in
the United States the rise of an elite band of superstar cities, including New
York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, is fast becoming economically
decoupled from cities and regions elsewhere in the nation, resulting in sig-
nificantly widening development gaps (Florida, 2017). However, is the eco-
nomic pre-eminence of these superstar cities assured in the long term? As
Jane Jacobs (1961) describes and analyses with such real-world eloquence,
when the distribution of power in a city or region becomes restricted to a
relatively small number of human agents, the chances are that their long-
term economic evolution and development prospects will be harmed. Jacobs
(1961) argued that the narrow power base existing in cities such as New York
in the 1950s and 1960s was a cause of urban and regional decline, and it is
likely that the broadened distribution of power across wider networks of
agency within such cities has led to their rejuvenation and heightened rates
of economic development.
More generally, we propose that the rise in importance given to cultural
values has led to the emergence of a ‘new sociology of development’ entwin-
ing the role of geography with factors relating to individual and collective
behaviour (Sachs, 2000). Essentially, human behaviour is fundamental to the
social sciences in terms of understanding what people do, where and why
they do it, and the costs and benefits of this behaviour. In order to under-
stand ‘aggregate’ differences in socio-economic activity and performance, it
is informative to explore how these differences stem from the experiences
and actions of individual and group actors.
Theoretically, we seek to build on conceptualizations relating to the geo-
graphical political economy of a city or region in terms of the role of agency
and bounded determinacy (Pike et al., 2009). Nevertheless, the book argues
that, although the geographical political economy approach seeks to under-
stand how human agency may be incorporated into an understanding of
urban and regional development, it has had less to say about the causes of
differing behaviours within often similar spatial environments, which is a
gap we seek to address. As Amin and Thrift (2017) argue, human behaviour
comes from a meeting of the minds and bodies of individuals and the
machines and matter that form the ‘daily sociality’ provided and formed by
the urban and regional environment. It is precisely this relationship between
such human behaviour and the spatial environment that we aim to explore
and analyse.
1.2 Behaviour and the Development Problem
Although growing inequalities can be observed across cities and regions

within and across many nations (Florida, 2017), the search for equality is
likely to be elusive and in many ways futile. Instead, the quest should be for
‘equity’ within and between cities and regions, which comes in the form of
fairness in terms of access to opportunities and the capability and capacity
for individual development, self-efficacy, and enhancement regardless of
location. In order to consider issues of equity and equality, economic devel-
opment theory—in particular urban and regional development theory—has
been largely dominated by downstream perceptions based on explanatory
factors relating to resources and capital and their allocation, as well as pat-
terns of economic structure and the configuration of economic systems
(Capello and Nijkamp, 2009). However, variations in economic performance
are often not possible to explain through differences in traditional inputs
such as labour and capital, even when accounting for human capital and
knowledge production (Obschonka et al., 2015). Furthermore, economic
growth does not necessarily result in ‘good development’, with low-quality
growth manifesting itself through increased economic and social inequality
(Stiglitz, 2013). More generally, while there has been some recent recogni-
tion that behavioural and cultural influences have a role to play in develop-
ment processes, they have not been systematically considered, despite these
influences potentially having a profound effect on the type of development
sought and attained.
In terms of existing scholarly recognition, the role of institutions in foster-
ing or constraining development is increasingly acknowledged (Rodríguez-
Pose, 2013), as well as three key interrelated concepts—culture, psychology,
and agency—that provide a basis for establishing a framework facilitating an
explanation of how behavioural factors interact and result in development
differentials across cities and regions (Huggins and Thompson, 2019). In
essence, behavioural theories of development are rooted in the relationship
and interplay between cultural and psychological factors, with institutions
acting as a moderator between intended and actualized behaviour. Such
actualized behaviour comes in the form of the human agency impacting
Introduction 5
upon urban and regional development outcomes. Furthermore, the nature of

agency and institutions in a city or region will be dependent upon the role
and forms of existing power and the extent to which this is distributed
through particular networks that influence evolutionary patterns of develop-
ment (Huggins and Thompson, 2019).
Given these scholarly advances, in recent years there have been moves
toward a (re)turn to addressing the role of human behaviour in determining
urban and regional development outcomes. In particular, psychocultural
behavioural patterns may provide a basis for understanding the type and
nature of human agency within cities and regions (Huggins et al., 2018).
Furthermore, such agency is based on a rationality that is likely to be spa-
tially bounded and intrinsically linked to the nature, source, and evolution of
institutions and power. Given this, an integration of human behavioural
aspects into urban and regional development theory offers significant poten-
tial for exploring and explaining long-term evolutionary patterns of
development.
1.3 The Fundamentals of Behaviour and Development
As a way of sketching the fundamental issues and concepts relating to the

role of human behaviour in fostering or hindering development, the rest of
this chapter summarizes some of the arguments and findings in the remain-
der of this volume. Initially, Chapter 2 illustrates that the roots of behavioural
differences across cities and regions are co-determined by two key factors,
namely, socio-spatial culture and personality psychology. It is the interaction
of these two factors that forms the behavioural intentions of individuals.
Socio-spatial culture refers to the broader societal traits and relations that
underpin places in terms of prevailing mindsets and the overall way of life
within these places (Huggins and Thompson, 2015a). Personality psychology
refers to one of the predominant paradigms in behavioural psychology for
understanding and measuring differences in personality traits across individ
uals (McCrae and Terracciano, 2005). It is proposed that there is a relationship
between socio-spatial culture and the aggregate personality psychology
within cities and regions that is interactive and interdependent.
The interaction between psychological and cultural elements forms the
basis of the spatially bounded psychocultural behavioural footprint of a city
or region. However, this does not immediately lead to certain forms of
behaviour or agency, but more to the ‘intentions’ of individuals to behave in
a particular way. Therefore, it is argued that the combination of personality
psychology at the individual level and the socio-spatial culture of a city or

region in which an individual is located co-determines the intention to behave
in a particular manner. Institutions, however, may constrain or incentivize
particular intentions, but also mould and enable habits, preferences, values,
and actions. In essence, people create social systems, and these systems then
organize and influence people’s lives (Bandura, 2006). Within a city or
region, therefore, the translation of behavioural intentions to actual behav-
iour will be moderated by an institutional filter based on the underlying
incentives and constraints to act in certain ways.
Actual behaviour is expressed through human agency, which can be defined
as ‘acts done intentionally’ to achieve change or to deliberately reproduce
previous actions. Therefore, the behaviour of individuals and collectives
within cities and regions that is actualized will establish the types of human
agency impacting upon the systems and trajectory of development.
Furthermore, the level of development across cities and regions will depend
on the nature of this human agency.
Existing studies have recognized the influence of institutions in constraining
or enabling differing forms of behaviour (Van den Bergh and Stagl, 2003),
while accepting the ability of individuals to take intentional, purposive, and
meaningful actions (Hodgson, 2006). What is missing, however, is an under-
standing of how power affects the ability to deploy agency and achieve
change, and it is important, therefore, to consider the nature and role of
power with regard to agency that influences long-term development. This
leads to the proposition that the possession and exercising of power determine
the way in which agency influences the evolution and the form of urban and
regional institutional filters.
Given the above, a long-term perspective on development should
acknowledge that the genetic—encompassing personality psychology—evo-
lution of humans and their cultural evolution are ultimately interactive, that
is positive and negative interactions between cultural and biological evolu-
tion may occur and give rise to cultural-genetic co-evolution (Van den Bergh
and Stagl, 2003). In Chapter 3, we shall see that the interaction between cul-
ture and psychology forms part of the complex adaptive systems that shape
economic and social outcomes (Martin and Sunley, 2015a). Furthermore, as
genetic and cultural factors can be considered co-evolutionary, in the con-
text of urban and regional development outcomes existing theories may have
greater explanatory power if more emphasis is given to spatio-temporal
dimensions in terms of the relationship between current behaviour and
behaviour in the middle or distant future. Drawing on data from the UK
and the US, the ‘psychocultural life’ of cities and regions is examined to
Introduction 7
understand differing types of behaviour and their relationship with development

outcomes. An empirical analysis of cities and regions in the UK identifies and
explores three underlying forms of geographic psychocultural behaviour—
Diverse Extraversion, Inclusive Amenability, and Individual Commitment—
that are found to be associated with rates of urban and regional development.
As discussed in Chapter 4, urban and regional histories concerning the
formation and endurance of local cultures and institutions are central factors
mediating the relationship between behavioural intentions and actualized
human agency within a city or region. Institutions come in a multiplicity of
forms through both formal rules and laws and, perhaps more importantly,
informal conventions that either incentivize individuals to seek, or constrain
them from seeking, to act out and actualize their initial behavioural inten-
tions. Therefore, these institutions can be conceptualized as a filter through
which intentions either flow into behavioural actions or become blocked or
at least diluted. Indeed, institutions not only moderate human agency but are
also themselves formed by such agency, something that is often neglected in
some branches of economic geography, particularly that stemming from an
evolutionary perspective (MacKinnon et al., 2009). Studies have highlighted
the dangers of path dependence and institutional lock-in, but this does not
take into account the endogenous activities that can lead to path creation
(Martin and Sunley, 2006). In this sense, to be an agent is to intentionally
make things happen by one’s actions (Bandura, 2001), and in order to unpack
and delineate the forms of agency that potentially impact on urban and
regional development outcomes, the field of psychology provides some use-
ful pointers. In particular, the social cognitive theory proposed by Bandura
(2001) distinguishes three modes of agency: personal agency in the form of
the power to originate actions for given purposes; proxy agency that relies on
others to act on one’s behest to secure desired outcomes; and collective
agency exercised through socially coordinative and interdependent effort.
Bandura’s (2001) three forms of agency necessarily occur through a host of
differing forms of agent within a city or region, but from the perspective of
urban and regional development theory it is useful to identify with more
precision the types of agent, agency, and action that are likely to achieve
desired (or undesired) results and outcomes. Although a wide range of over-
lapping forms of agency at differing scalar levels can be considered, Chapter 4
argues that three meta-forms of localized agency are particularly likely to
impact on urban and regional development outcomes, namely, entrepre-
neurial agency, political agency, and labour agency. These forms of agency
and agent in a city or region are likely to be a key factor determining the level
and types of development occurring. From the perspective of economic
development, agents will shape the structure, organization, and dynamics of

industry within a city or region. In particular, they will determine: the types
of capital—human, physical, knowledge, entrepreneurial, and the like—that
are sought and invested in; the form of industrial structure and the range
and rate of innovative economic activity; and the nature of industrial organ
ization and dynamics, especially that concerning the governance and clustering
of market and non-market economic activity, that is the economic systems of
cities and regions, and their evolution. Taking a historic perspective,
Chapter 4 indicates how the persistence of local cultures shapes the contem-
porary systems and dynamics of urban and regional economies.
If the human behaviour found in a city or region shapes its evolutionary
development, it is necessary to explore how these behavioural elements
interface and interact with more transparent and acknowledged develop-
mental factors in the form of the structure, nature, and organization of firms
within an economy, and more broadly the institutions and governance of the
political economy (see Chapter 5). Fundamentally, within any city or region
the interpersonal social networks formed by key agents establish the frame-
work for the distribution of power, particularly power that impacts upon the
evolution and development of the economy. To this end, Chapter 5 is structured
around the proposition that the distribution of wealth and welfare creating
power within a city or region is a function of the scale and nature of the
social networks through which economically and socially beneficial know
ledge flows.
Cities and regions that have more inclusive networks of this type are likely
to be more advanced and developed, and will also be more equitable in terms
of their access to opportunity and ability to partake in a fair urban and
regional community. We argue that, across nations, leading urban regions
often possess the most inclusive power networks and are also the most equit
able. This is quite a controversial suggestion given that such places are usu-
ally considered to have the highest levels of inequality, but existing measures
of inequality, such as income-based Gini coefficients, mask an understand-
ing of the deeper behavioural considerations of prosperity differences within
cities and regions.
Social network theory and analysis indicate that many of the most
advanced cities and regions around the globe have relatively flat and open
(equal) social networks with regard to developmental factors, while lagging
cities and regions tend to be more hierarchical (unequal) and be populated
by a relatively limited number of agents operating within elite ‘small world’
networks (Watts, 1999). Furthermore, engagement in these networks tends
to be linked to the underlying personality traits of agents (Burt, 2012), which
Introduction 9
means that, since more developed regions usually have more agents possessing
an ‘openness’ to their behaviour, they are more likely to have flatter, more
inclusive, and equitable networks.
Based on this line of reasoning, there has been a tendency to ignore the
probability that not all agency is likely to have the same level of power, with
some agents hindered by their position in terms of existing social networks,
which may allow elites to capture urban and regional development agendas
(Gregson, 2005). In effect, power can be viewed as an instrumental force,
which reflects the ability to mobilize others to undertake activities they
would not normally consider (Dahl, 1957). However, it can also be viewed in
the softer sense of individuals coming together to achieve intended shared
goals. It is important, therefore, to consider both perspectives, given that
collaborative relations are themselves rarely completely harmonious and
equal (Cumbers and MacKinnon, 2011).
As an outcome of these behavioural factors, cities and regions with the
most equitable power networks are more likely to evolve as talent centres
fuelled by ‘brain attraction’, with a rich base of knowledge workers, technol-
ogy, and expertise, and dense and flexible labour markets. Such places will
also have a higher propensity for public- and private-sector engagement in
innovation, and higher rates of entrepreneurship and associated venture
finance. As well as flat social networks, business network formation will be
prevalent, coupled with a relatively plentiful opportunity to access entrepre-
neurial support mechanisms. There is also likely to be strong industrial
clustering, especially among firms operating in highly tradable markets.
Unfortunately, in cities and regions with inequitable and hierarchical social-
power networks the reverse is likely to be true, with the following being
manifest: a stagnant and relatively low skills base, compounded by ‘brain
drain’; weak labour markets; a low density of public- and private-sector
engagement in innovation; below-average (national) rates of entrepreneur-
ship and venture finance; and a lack of strong industry clusters. Given that
economic-development theory largely points to these factors as being the
key drivers of such development, such drivers are themselves shaped by the
nature of power networks within and across cities and regions.
1.4 Empirically Testing the Theory
In order to fully examine the association between the nature of concepts

such as personality psychology, culture, human agency, and institutions, as
well as the causal impact on various factors relating to the economic
development of cities and regions, it is necessary to establish an empirical

evidence base that assesses the theoretical connections discussed above. To
achieve this, Chapters 6–8 quantitatively analyse the nature, source, and
co-evolution of behavioural factors within cities and regions and their devel-
opment capabilities. Chapter 6 empirically investigates the relationship
between culture, personality psychology, and institutions at the city and
regional level. It recognizes that any relationship between these constructs
are likely to be bidirectional, with it being inappropriate to assume that one
can be regarded as an independent factor that drives the other (Rentfrow et al.,
2009, 2013). Therefore, the analysis examines the particular relationships
between each of the three constructs in order to capture evidence on the
existence of their intertwined nature.
Chapter 6 tackles issues relating to the requirements for examining cul-
ture, psychology, and institutions more broadly. This is achieved through a
discussion of each of the constructs in terms of how they have been captured
in previous work, for example Beugelsdijk and Maseland (2011) in terms of
culture in economics, and Rodríguez-Pose’s (2013) discussion of institutions
for economic development. The focus here is on the theoretical differences
between the three constructs, and having outlined the broad issues that need
to be resolved when measuring the three constructs, the chapter further
examines existing empirical studies of culture (for example Tabellini, 2010;
Huggins and Thompson, 2016), personality psychology (Rentfrow et al.,
2015), and institutions (Charron et al., 2014) to critically examine the differ-
ent available measures of each. The analysis is undertaken both at an urban
and regional level using the UK as a case study, but also across nations where
formal institutions are likely to play a stronger role. It draws upon data
covering regions in Europe for international analysis, while focusing on cul-
tural measures developed at the urban and regional level by Huggins and
Thompson (2016) and personal psychology variables from the BBC psych
ology lab dataset (Rentfrow et al., 2015). Mechanisms such as selective
migration are examined to provide evidence of their role in the generation of
particular personality psychological profiles, cultures, and formal
institutions.
Whereas Chapter 6 seeks to understand the interactions between culture,
psychology, and institutional factors, Chapter 7 focuses on explaining how
these interactions impact on the agency of individuals in cities and regions.
This is accomplished through a focus on measuring agency in its different
forms and examining the influence of this agency. Sen’s (1985) perspective of
agency as a situation whereby individuals are free to undertake activities and
pursue particular goals of importance to them is instructive in understand-
ing how agency relates to participation in various activities concerning
Introduction 11
economic development. There are a number of different measures of agency

(Alkire, 2005), which according to Sen (1999) can be distinguished through
four dimensions: global or multidimensional; direct control or effective
power; well-being and freedom; and autonomy or ability. Such dimensions
include components relating to mobility, decision-making, and a sense of
self-worth (Jejeebhoy et al., 2010), and power is an important part of the
analysis, with many definitions of agency referring to it as the ability to make
choices either individually or collectively (Ozer and Bandura, 1990;
Bandura, 2000; Alsop et al., 2006).
To address these issues, the analysis undertaken here utilizes measures
from the European Social Survey (Kaasa et al., 2010), as well as considering
measures such as those associated with self-efficacy, that is the perception of
individuals in terms of their capability to pursue particular goals
(Bandura, 1997), and the autonomy element of self-determination theory
(Ryan and Deci, 2000). These are discussed in terms of understanding some
of the fundamental building blocks of agency such as the nature of Human
Agency Potential (HAP) and Human Agency Actualization (HAA), and the
analysis focuses on the role of cultural values, as well as forms of political,
labour, entrepreneurial, and environmental agency (Lee and Peterson, 2000).
This facilitates a broader range of urban and regional development measures
to be considered, with Chapter 8 focusing more particularly on an analysis of
the relationship between agency and the presence of entrepreneurial and
innovative activities within cities and regions.
Although entrepreneurial activity is often proxied by new venture creation
data, Chapter 8 recognizes broader measures of entrepreneurial activity. This is
intended to reflect the fact that entrepreneurial activity is not restricted to
small business ownership and new venture creation but may also encompass
entrepreneurial agency within larger established businesses and the public sec-
tor (Rae, 2010). To account for this broader interpretation of entrepreneurship,
data is drawn not only from traditional sources but also from alternatives such
as measures based on entrepreneurial orientation (Khandwalla, 1977;
Knight, 1997; Miller and Friesen, 1978), In summary, the chapter empirically
determines the extent to which agency actually results in economically benefi-
cial entrepreneurship and innovation across cities and regions.
1.5 Modelling and Addressing Behaviour and

Uneven Development
Building upon both the theoretical and empirical analysis, in Chapter 9 we

establish an extended Behavioural Model of Economic Development
encompassing the key elements and relationships that link them in order to
provide a more complete understanding of economic development. This is
accomplished by considering how constructs can be captured in a compatible
manner and exploring the design of an empirical estimation strategy to
account for personality psychology, culture, institutions, and agency within
an urban and regional economic development model. First, consideration is
given as to how economic development may be best captured. This includes
assessing measures that have been traditionally utilized such as Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) growth (McCann and Ortega-Argilés, 2015),
employment (Fratesi and Rodríguez-Pose, 2016), and average income
(Rattsø and Stokke, 2014). It also takes into consideration the argument that
development needs to account for the needs of the residents of a city or
region itself (Pike et al., 2007). This means expanding the discussion to
incorporate concepts such as competitiveness (Huggins and Thompson, 2017a)
and resilience (Martin, 2012; Martin and Sunley, 2015b), as well as acknow
ledging that different measures may affect the patterns observed across
regions and cities (Cellini et al., 2017). Also, there is a requirement to con-
sider broader measures of development, such as those associated with wider
notions of well-being (Frey and Stutzer, 2000; Huggins and Thompson, 2012;
Puntscher et al., 2015).
Chapter 9 discusses future developments that are required to extend
knowledge concerning the development role played by personality psych
ology, culture, agency, and institutions from an empirical standpoint. This is
achieved through critically examining the empirical analysis undertaken in the
chapter, as well as the three preceding chapters, and the measures included
within them. In particular, attention is paid to limitations with regard to
available data at different levels of spatial aggregation and the timeliness of
variables. Methodological issues and potential solutions are discussed in
relation to the empirical tools available.
In bringing the book to a conclusion, Chapter 10 seeks to focus on policy
and the levers for change, highlighting that uneven economic development
across cities and regions is the result of historic long-term evolutionary
behavioural processes whereby the psychological, cultural, and economic
dimensions of cities and regions continually reinforce each other, for better
or worse. In particular, psychocultural behaviour has the potential to be
persistent and deeply rooted in previously dominant economic activities, so
that its influence is felt many decades later. For example, historically high
levels of mining are found to be associated with lower levels of entrepre-
neurial activity (Glaeser et al., 2015), positive attitudes to collective behaviour
Introduction 13
in the form of unionism (Holmes, 2006), and preferences against redistribu-

tion (Couttenier and Sangier, 2015).
In the context of mature cities and regional economies in advanced nations,
there are strong reasons to suggest that the concentration of large-scale trad
itional industries in these regions has left a lasting psychological imprint on
local culture, with selective outmigration resulting in more optimistic and
resilient individuals with relatively positive and agentic mindsets seeking
new environments that offer new economic opportunities, leaving an indi
genous population in the home region that is often lacking in ‘entrepreneur-
ial spirit’ (Stuetzer et. al. 2016; Obschonka et al., 2017).
As a means of addressing the unevenness resulting from the differing
‘spirit’—in other words, psychocultural behaviour—across cities and regions,
the mix of political, worker, and entrepreneurial agency will determine the
development fates of these places. In particular, entrepreneurs represent key
catalysts of change, and throughout history urban and regional transforma
tion has been catalysed by a core group of entrepreneurial agents that have
taken a lead in positively evolving the economies in which they are physic
ally situated, with new generations of agent often producing innovations that
further push forward the technological frontier set by their predecessors. In
mature and less developed urban and regional economies it is all too often
the case that these types of agents have migrated to other regions with
stronger ecosystems and greater opportunities, or that the underlying psych-
ocultural traits of the region have meant that such agency has not been nur-
tured in the first instance. This leaves these cities and regions in an economic
situation in which they lack a critical mass in the types of industries and
sectors through which value and competitiveness can be best achieved.
It is concluded that while the above points to the role of policy in attract-
ing, retaining, and supporting existing agents, the key to renewal and trans
formation is likely to lie with the nurturing of new indigenous agents. One
route, which is necessarily a long-term one, to achieving this is through
changes to urban and regional education systems, especially those that seek
to provide individuals with the mindsets resembling the ‘extrovert’ entrepre-
neurial agents that are considered to be central to resilient urban and regional
ecosystems (Martin and Sunley, 2011).
2
Human Behaviour and the
Development of Cities and Regions
2.1 Introduction
Theories of urban and regional development are predominately based on

explanations concerning the location and structural organization of firms,
the types of industries in which these firms operate, and the rates and forms
of capital they employ (Gordon and McCann, 2005). However, contemporary
economic geography theory has begun to address the role of human behav
iour in determining rates of urban and regional development (Huggins and
Thompson, 2016, 2019; Lee, 2017; Garretsen et al., 2019). As a result, it is
relevant to consider the range of agents that are recognized as important to
urban and regional development processes and mechanisms beyond a focus
on firms (Pike et al., 2009). Incorporating these multiple elements into a single
holistic approach is clearly not without challenges, which arise in terms of
integrating different levels of analysis, as well as addressing the differing
ontological approaches used to examine systems as complex as urban and
regional economies (Pike et al., 2009, 2015; Martin and Sunley, 2015a).
Research examining the association between economic development and
behavioural concepts such as culture further highlights the difficulties of
separating out the causal impacts of human behaviour at the group level on
economic activity (Alesina and Giuliano, 2015). This work takes the approach
of linking culture, through changes in preferences, to outcomes. However, to
successfully achieve this there is a need not only to identify the relationships
that generate and reproduce particular cultural traits but also to isolate the
mechanisms behind these relationships. This is consistent with research on
the notion of geographical political economy, which emphasizes the import
ance of plural and interdependent methodological approaches of both a
quantitative and qualitative nature (Pike et al., 2009). Nevertheless, while the
geographical political economy framework attempts to delve into the role of
human agency in urban and regional development processes, it has not
unpacked the nature of differing behaviours across spatial environments.
A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development: The Uneven Evolution of Cities and Regions. Robert Huggins and Piers
Thompson, Oxford University Press (2021). © Robert Huggins and Piers Thompson.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198832348.003.0002
A behavioural approach to examining development is not, however, strictly

‘new’ in either comparative economics or what we now term economic
geography. Myrdal (1968), for example, takes a behavioural and cultural
approach to understanding economic development across Asian economies,
in particular the role of religious and social (caste) systems. From the 1960s,
there was also an emerging school of behavioural geography largely con
cerned with identifying the cognitive processes that lead to individuals and
communities codifying, reacting to, and recreating their environments (Boal
and Livingstone, 1989). Pred (1967), in particular, argued that economic
geography and locational distribution patterns are a consequence of the
aggregate manifestation of decisional acts made at the individual, group,
and/or firm level. This provoked a significant behavioural ‘turn’ in the field of
location studies and economic geography (Philo, 1989). However, subse
quent cultural turns in the wider field of human geography triggered the
demise of behavioural geography (Strauss, 2008).
Somewhat in contrast, within the field of economics there has been an
emergence and resurgence of behavioural and psychological studies and the
ories that seek to capture and explain the decision-making processes of indi
viduals. In particular, behavioural economists have sought to integrate
psychological theories of behaviour as a means of explaining economic action
(Camerer and Loewenstein, 2004). Such theories have shown the limits of
rational choice theories in explaining economic, as well as social, action and
the underlying decision-making processes of individuals in determining such
action (Hodgson, 2013). Drawing on Simon’s (1982) notion of ‘bounded
rationality’, behavioural economics suggests that the minds of individuals are
required to be understood in terms of the environmental context in they have
evolved, resulting in restrictions on human information processing due to
limits in knowledge and computational capacity (Kahneman, 2003).
Within urban and regional development theory, the rise in prominence
concerning the role of cultural values has led to new advances relating to
socio-spatial culture and the spatial nature of personality psychology that
have sought to address knowledge gaps relating to the role of context and
environment in shaping behaviour (Obschonka et al., 2013a; Huggins and
Thompson, 2016). From the psychological perspective, Obschonka et al.
(2015), for example, draw on the Five-Factor Theory of Personality—the Big
Five traits—which is the predominant personality model in contemporary
psychological science utilized to explain differences in behaviour across
places. Furthermore, scholars have increasingly highlighted the role of
agency and associated institutions in fostering urban and regional develop
ment, particularly though the welfare effects it generates within and through
Human Behaviour and the Development of Cities and Regions 17
communities (Bristow and Healy, 2014). As Mokyr (2015) suggests, once

institutions are accepted as an important factor in explaining development
differences, cultural explanations—in the form of the beliefs and values on
which institutions are founded—are unlikely to be far behind.
In this context, the notion of urban and regional development should not
be confined to material aspects that are principally related to economic growth
and the ‘productionist’ view of development, but should also incorporate
more ‘humanistic’ aspects, in particular conceptions of well-being (Chang,
2013). Explanations of place-based development at the urban or regional
level, therefore, should encompass broader notions concerning how places
improve and ‘get better’ in relation to a wider variety of socio-economic
elements (Pike et al., 2007). In other words, urban and regional development
should be conceptualized as representing a change for the better for those
living and working in particular cities and regions. There is no unique per
fect form and such urban and regional development may come in a range of
differing forms.
This chapter argues that the roots of behavioural theories of development
relate to the interplay between cultural and psychological factors, with insti
tutions playing a moderating role between intended and actualized human
behaviour. It proposes that the forms of human agency associated with such
behaviour are likely to impact upon urban and regional development out
comes. It introduces the role of power, and how this underpins the means by
which agency facilitates institutional change. To connect the arguments made
in the preceding sections, it sketches an emergent conceptual behavioural
model of urban and regional development, and concludes that urban and
regional development theories should seek to engage further with behavioural
explanations as a means of understanding long-term evolutionary patterns.
2.2 Psychocultural Behaviour: Socio-Spatial Culture

and Personality Psychology
Within strands of the economic geography literature there have been calls to
better understand the role of ‘microprocesses’ on ‘macrostructures’ within
cities and regions, as well as the impact of macrostructures on these micro
processes (MacKinnon et al., 2009). The aim of this section, therefore, is to
argue that the sources of behaviour across cities and regions are co-determined
by factors that combine microprocesses and macrostructure in the shape
of socio-spatial culture and personality psychology. It is further argued that
psychocultural evolution is at the heart of changing development outcomes.
The concept of culture generally refers to the way in which people behave,
often as a result of their background and group affiliation. Guiso et al.
(2006: 23) define it as ‘those customary beliefs and values that ethnic, religious
and social groups transmit fairly unchanged from generation to generation’.
Rather than concerning individual behaviour, it relates to shared systems of
meaning within and across ascribed and acquired social groups (Hofstede,
1980). Van Maanen and Schein (1979) suggest that culture can be defined by
the values, beliefs, and expectations that members of specific social groups
come to share, while Hofstede (1980) refers to it as the collective program
ming of the mind, which distinguishes one group or category of people from
another. As indicated in Chapter 1, socio-spatial culture relates to the broad
societal traits and relations that underpin cities and regions through prevail
ing mindsets and the overall way of life within these locations (Huggins and
Thompson, 2015a). It principally constitutes the social structure and features
of group life within cities and regions that can generally be considered to be
beyond the economic life of such places (Huggins and Thompson, 2016).
Fundamentally, therefore, the socio-spatial culture of cities and regions con
sists of the ways and means by which individuals and groups within place-
based communities interact and shape their environment.
Huggins and Thompson (2015a, 2016) establish a model of socio-spatial
(or what they also term ‘community’) culture whereby five component fac
tors are argued to be of principal importance: (i) engagement with education
and work—partly drawing on Weber’s (1930) enduring notion of the work
ethic and attitudes to economic participation; (ii) social cohesion—relating
to Durkheim’s (1893) notion of mechanical and organic solidarity social
cohesion, whereby trait similarities and interdependence among individuals
result in a perceived unity, togetherness, and less likelihood of exclusion; (iii)
femininity and caring attitudes—relating to Hofstede’s (1980) typology of
national cultures and the notion of the femininity or masculinity of these
cultures, with masculine cultures considered to be more competitive and
materialistic than their feminine counterparts, which are more caring and
harmonious in their outlook; (iv) adherence to social rules—referring to the
acknowledged role of such adherence for coordination purposes (Rodríguez
-Pose and Storper, 2006), but also noting that it may constrain creative and
innovative behavioural intentions; and (v) collective action—referring to the
extent to which cities and regions adopt equity-driven, cooperative action
approaches as opposed to more individualistic action approaches (Johnstone
and Lionais, 2004).
As indicated above, work on socio-spatial culture has begun to address
knowledge gaps relating to the role of context and environment in shaping
behaviour (Huggins and Thompson, 2015a, 2016). In related studies it has

been found that more open tolerant societies grow faster (Rodríguez-Pose
and Hardy, 2015). This openness allows access to more ideas but can also
help exploit the knowledge held and developed within cities and regions as
more diverse sets of skills become available (Jacobs, 1969; Glaeser, 2002).
This suggests that one explanation for persistent differences in the develop
ment trajectory of cities and regions is the role that socio-spatial community
culture plays. Studies such as Tabellini (2010) have found a connection
between culture and institutions and the economic development of regions.
Other studies have found a link between community culture and the types of
entrepreneurial activity that may be responsible for differing local or regional
economic growth rates (Freytag and Thurik, 2007; Huggins and Thompson,
2015a, 2016). Overall, the existing literature suggests the influence of differ
ent aspects of culture on behavioural intentions, although this group-level
impact ignores the influence of the individual in the formation of these
behavioural intentions.
Alongside socio-spatial culture, personality psychology refers to one of
the predominant paradigms in behavioural psychology that seeks to under
stand and measure differences in personality traits across individuals
(McCrae and Terracciano, 2005). Within studies of geographical personality
the measures normally considered are those associated with the so-called
Big Five framework of personality traits, consisting of (i) openness—the
tendency to be open to new aesthetic, cultural, or intellectual experiences;
(ii) conscientiousness—the tendency to be organized, responsible, and hard-
working; (iii) extraversion—an orientation of one’s interests and energies
towards the outer world of people and things rather than the inner world of
subjective experience, characterized by positive affect and sociability; (iv)
agreeableness—the tendency to act in a cooperative, unselfish manner; and
(v) neuroticism (cf. emotional stability)—a chronic level of emotional
instability and proneness to psychological distress, while emotional stability
is largely the opposite and concerns predictability and stability in emotional
reactions, with an absence of rapid mood changes (Goldberg, 1992).
In parallel with scholarly work in the field of socio-spatial culture,
researchers of personality psychology have found that in terms of economic
prosperity there is a positive link with openness and extraversion (Rentfrow
et al., 2015). Lee (2017) further finds that conscientiousness in England and
Wales is positively associated with innovation as captured by patenting
activity, while Obschonka et al. (2015) include conscientiousness in their
entrepreneurial index, which they find is positively linked to actual entre
preneurial activity.
Although the majority of work on personality psychology has examined

the impact of individual personality traits on a variety of outcomes, the idio
graphic perspective suggests that a more holistic view should be taken
(Rentfrow et al., 2013). This idiographic perspective refers to understanding
behaviour through a configuration of differing traits, which at a geographical
level facilitates an investigation of the extent to which particular configurations
of traits occur with some regularity in specific regions (Rentfrow et al., 2013).
Certain configurations of traits have been found to be good predictors of
developmental outcomes such as achievement at school (Hart et al., 2003);
the development of social support networks, and the likelihood of having
spells in unemployment (Caspi, 2000); and older-age health outcomes such
as the prevalence of strokes and heart disease (Chapman and Goldberg, 2011).
Rentfrow et al. (2013) use a cluster analysis approach to identify three psy
chological profiles of regions covering the forty-eight contiguous US states:
friendly and conventional; relaxed and creative; and temperamental and
uninhibited. The friendly and conventional profile is low on neuroticism and
openness but high on extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
The relaxed and creative states have low extraversion, agreeableness, and
neuroticism, but are high on openness. The final set of states described as
temperamental and uninhibited are low on agreeableness and conscientious
ness, and high on neuroticism. These places display strong differences in terms
of a variety of political, economic, social, and health outcomes. Economically,
the friendly and conventional states are those which are the least successful.
More generally, personality psychology traits are found to play an important
role not only independently, but in terms of the combinations formed.
Although personality psychology represents a potentially powerful means
of explaining the uneven development of cities and regions, it is important to
highlight that personality traits in the form of the Big Five are defined with
out reference to context, that is situation or socio-spatial culture (Almlund
et al., 2011). Indeed, in the long term any perspective on development should
acknowledge that the genetic evolution of humans, including personality,
and their cultural evolution are interactive, with the interaction of cultural
and biological evolution giving rise to cultural-genetic co-evolution (Van den
Bergh and Stagl, 2003). Such co-evolutionary forces can be related to theories
of ‘generation’ and ‘collective memory’, or what Lippmann and Aldrich (2016)
refer to as ‘generational units’ in the form of meaningful collectives that move
through time with high degrees of self-awareness.
Rentfrow et al. (2015) highlight three routes that may result in personality
traits differing across or within regions. These mechanisms act through
traditions and social norms; selective migration; and physical environment.

In the first of these, the traditions and customs associated with socio-spatial
culture generate particular social norms, and in due course these social
norms impact upon individuals’ attitudes and behaviours (Hofstede and
McCrae, 2004). McCrae (1996), for example, indicates that attendance at col
lege has a positive effect on individual openness. Exposure to a more diverse
population is also found to be positively associated with greater acceptance
and openness (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006). For instance, it might be expected
that urban and regional socio-spatial cultures displaying higher levels of
femininity and caring activities may generate social norms focused on look
ing after and out for others in society. This may alter behaviours and expect
ations in such a manner that individuals within a city or region become more
agreeable.
The second mechanism, selective migration, is also linked to socio-spatial
culture, with Jokela (2009), for example, illustrating how creative individuals
are more likely to migrate and shape culture in their new locations. In the
USA, Rentfrow et al. (2013) suggest that those with greater openness seek
out novelty, with states classed as relaxed and creative being settled by self-
selecting individuals who are more adventurous. The third mechanism,
physical environment, impacts upon individual personality traits in the form
of a person’s feelings and levels of belonging to a place, which in the long
term shape the values and beliefs associated with socio-spatial culture (Van
de Vliert, 2009; Huggins and Thompson, 2016). More generally, although
particular local cultural traits may attract or deter the inward migration of
individuals with certain personality traits, once located within a particular
city or region such personality traits will cause cultures to evolve and to
potentially reproduce themselves in ways that are likely to have either posi
tive or negative connotations for development. This may be a slow process,
but where, for example, cities and regions with more diverse socio-spatial
cultures attract individuals of a more extravert nature, this is likely to lead to
a greater willingness to try out new ideas and form more extended networks
(Glaeser, 2002).
In summary, urban and regional development outcomes can be said to be
contingent upon two key behavioural traits, namely, socio-spatial culture
and personality psychology. Socio-spatial culture refers to behaviour condi
tioned by place-based group affiliation, while personality psychology con
sists of the innately determined nature of individuals that conditions
behavioural intentions and outcomes. At the level of the city or region, the
relationship between the two can be considered bidirectional, with the
underlying personality traits of individuals influencing overall socio-spatial

cultural traits, and vice versa. Therefore, it is proposed that:
Proposition 2.1
There is an interactive and interdependent relationship between the socio-
spatial culture of a city or region and the aggregate personality psychology
of the individuals located in these cities and regions.
The interaction between psychological and cultural factors underpins the

spatially bounded psychocultural behavioural footprint of any city or region.
However, this footprint does not immediately lead to a particular form of
behaviour or agency but to the ‘intentions’ of individuals to behave in a par
ticular way. In this sense, the behavioural intentions of individuals in a city
or region are determined by the existing psychocultural footprint of the
place in which they are situated. Such intentions concern behaviour that is
planned but is not always actioned due to a range of intervening and mediat
ing factors. Given this, the following is proposed:
Proposition 2.2
The combination of an individual’s personality psychology and the socio-
spatial culture of the city or region in which they are located determine their
intention to behave in a particular manner.
2.3 Behavioural Intentions and the Institutional Filter
Behavioural intentions refer to behaviour that is planned but not necessarily

actioned, and are indications of how hard people are willing to try, and how
much of an effort they are planning to exert, in order to behave in a certain
way (Ajzen, 1991). In general, the stronger the intention to engage in a par
ticular form of behaviour, the more likely should be its performance
(Ajzen, 1991). However, this does not make clear the mechanisms through
which the strength of intention or ability to perform such behaviour are
regulated. One possible explanation is the role of institutions in either pro
moting or restricting individual behavioural intentions, which subsequently
impacts on the nature of actualized behaviour. Institutions are ‘the rules of
the game’ in the form of humanly devised constraints on (or enablers of)
certain forms of behaviour (North, 2005). In this section it is proposed that
the relationship between behavioural intentions and actualized behaviour is
moderated by an institutional filter, which refers to the set of ‘rules’ that
determines behaviour at the urban and regional level. As MacKinnon et al.

(2009) highlight, institutions are likely to constrain or incentivize intentions,
and also to mould and enable behaviour in the form of habits, preferences,
values, and actions. In other words, social systems are created by people,
with these systems acting as an organizing and influencing factor on people’s
lives (Bandura, 2006). In one sense, if culture is the mother, children are the
institutions (Harrison and Huntington, 2000), with such institutions having
two broad faces: one that incentivizes or constrains behaviour and action;
and another that is itself the product of human agency (Lowndes and
Roberts, 2013).
If individuals are given a sufficient degree of actual control over their
behaviour, they can be expected to carry out their intentions when the
opportunity arises, and intentions can be assumed to be the antecedent to
actual behaviour (Ajzen, 2002). The institutional filter, therefore, is a deter
mining factor of the level of available control. Van den Bergh and Stagl
(2003) outline a number of mechanisms through which institutions impact
on the behaviour of individuals (and groups of individuals). As well as
including the enabling or constraining of particular forms of behaviour,
institutions may select among the diversity of individual behavioural inten
tions and preferences, with alternative institutions often competing and
enforcing norms through rewarding or punishing individuals that do (or do
not) follow these norms. These institutions are of particular importance
given the acceptance of bounded rather than perfect rationality, since when
faced with limited ability and uncertainty, routines and rules guide actors
through the mechanisms and processes that lead from intentions to actions
and agency (MacKinnon et al., 2009). Given this, the institutional filter can
be defined as the humanly devised constraints that structure interaction,
covering both formal (de jure)—rules, laws, constitutions—and informal (de
facto)—conventions—constraints and their enforcement, which then define
the incentive structure of societies and their economies (North, 2005).
Within the literature on institutions two core streams have emerged: that
associated with economic and political science (North, 1990); and that draw
ing on sociology and organizational theory (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983).
The former stream concerns institutions shaped by rules, procedures, and
agreements, while the latter focuses on the role of individuals as decision-
making agents, whereby such decisions are based on heuristics associated
with conventions linked to shared cultures. Although some institutions are
necessarily fixed across nations, such as law, regulation, and property rights,
others may be subject to urban and regional differentiation. Urban and
regional institutions can be considered to consist of the underlying rules of
the game relating to factors such as the incentive to save and invest; embrace
competition, innovation, and technological development; engage in educa
tion, learning, or entrepreneurship; and participate in networks. They will
also be reflected in the presence and structure of property ownership; and
provision of public services (Huggins, 2016). Enabling institutions will take
account of urban and regional contextual factors, with complementary insti
tutions developing through repeated interactions. Constraining institutions
may limit the directions in which a city or regional economy can develop in
the future. Therefore, choices that push places towards the development of a
particular set of institutions over another may influence the nature of long-
term development.
Rodríguez-Pose and his collaborators (Rodríguez-Pose and Storper, 2006;
Farole et al., 2011; Rodríguez-Pose, 2013) have developed a framework of
community (which represents a spatially localized notion of institutions)
and society (which represents spatially broader institutions) in order to place
institutionalist approaches more centrally within urban and regional devel
opment theory. In the process, this framework highlights the importance of
geographical context when examining institutional models of development.
Both community and society are considered to influence development through
the expectations and incentives provided to agents (Farole et al., 2011).
However, how these effects vary across cities and regions remains little
understood but are likely to differ as a result of psychoculturally determined
behavioural intentions.
Contributions from new institutional economics have recognized the tem
poral nature of institutions, with embedded informal institutions considered
to be more enduring than those associated with more formal governance
mechanisms (Williamson, 2000; Rafiqui, 2009). In general, institutions
introduced indigenously, and which evolve endogenously, are the most likely
to persist over time and to be relatively ‘sticky’, as they will have evolved from
pre-existing institutions and beliefs (Boettke et al., 2008). Institutions emer
ging exogenously from, for example, national government are likely to be
less sticky, even less so in the case of institutions and institutional change
emerging from supranational governments. This emphasizes the need to
consider not only the notion of institutional ‘thickness’ but also institutional
‘stickiness’. In particular, such stickiness may accentuate the role of urban
and regional institutional filters in compounding economic and social
inequalities within contemporary development systems, such as through the
incentivization of rent-seeking behaviour (Stiglitz, 2013; Piketty, 2014). As
Stiglitz (2013) argues, this can occur when certain people are able to set the
rules and choose the referee. Therefore, institutional filters play a central role
in determining behaviour within the urban and regional context, and subse
quently the action of particular agents within cities and regions:
Proposition 2.3
The translation of the behavioural intentions of individuals and their actual
behaviour will be moderated by an institutional filter in the form of the
underlying incentives and constraints to behaving in certain ways within a
particular city or region.
2.4 Human Agency
The contribution of institutionalism in economic geography has helped pro

vide an understanding of the constraints and promotion of particular forms
of behaviour, but such contributions have been criticized for failing to
account for the agency that is central to the formation and evolution of insti
tutions (Cumbers et al., 2003). In the structuration theory proposed by
Giddens (1984), structure in the form of social and economic systems pro
vides the underlying conditions that bound, yet do not determine, the activ
ities of particular agents (Moos and Dear, 1986). Through this theoretical
approach, Giddens (1984) has sought to reconcile part of the ongoing ten
sion within both cultural and institutional analysis in relation to the connec
tion between the impact of economic and social structure and the agency of
individuals operating within these structures. Within this framework, agents
are considered to be active, knowledgeable, reasoning persons and are vital
components of any analysis of subsequent outcomes (Moos and Dear, 1986).
Therefore, opening the black box of place-based structure to encompass psy
chocultural behaviour alongside institutional factors potentially facilitates a
fuller explanation of the determinants of outcomes in the context of urban
and regional development.
As Storper (2013) indicates, it is vital to shed further light on the role of
agency in fostering urban and regional development, particularly through
the welfare effects it generates within and through communities, and it is
important to recognize that institutions moderate, but are also formed by,
human agency. One approach to understanding this translation is methodo
logical individualism, whereby macro-level outcomes are retraceable to
individual decision-making agents (Hodgson, 2007). Such approaches stem
from the work of McClelland (1967), which suggests that the level of
motivation embodied in individual agents to achieve particular outcomes

will be linked to the ensuing rates of development of the societies in which
these individuals operate. Within Bandura’s (2006) social cognitive theory
primacy is given to the role of ‘personal efficacy’, which he considers relates
to the level of belief that individuals have in their capability to achieve
desired results from their actions. However, it should be noted that such
expectations are not necessarily perfectly rational but bounded by their psy
chological, cultural, and institutional setting. Without such personal efficacy,
which Bandura (2006) considers to be the cornerstone for understanding
human agency, individuals are unlikely to have the incentive to act in a par
ticular manner.
Fundamentally, agency refers to acts done intentionally, which is in line
with the concept of behavioural intentions outlined above. For example, in
the case of workers agency will require that they be an autonomous force
(Bandura, 2001). Therefore, agency relates to intentional actions taken to
produce change or to deliberately reproduce previous actions, which avoids
Castree’s (2007) criticism of the tendency for the term agency to be used to
refer to any form of action. Bandura’s (2001) social cognitive theory distin
guishes three modes of agency: personal agency based on forms of power to
originate actions for given purposes; proxy agency based on a reliance of
others to act at one’s behest and on one’s behalf to secure desired outcomes;
and collective agency based on exercising action through socially coordina
tive and interdependent effort.
In most fields, research on agency has tended to focus on the role of per
sonal agency, even though many individuals do not necessarily have direct
control over ensuing conditions that affect them. In these circumstances,
socially mediated proxy agency may better facilitate well-being due to the
lack of the necessary competencies or the perceived capability by some indi
viduals to undertake particular responsibilities (Bandura, 2006). While the
upside of proxy agency is that it can promote development outcomes at
multiple levels, it can also stifle the nurturing of competencies and breed
vulnerability due to power resting elsewhere (Bandura, 2001). Alongside
personal and proxy agency, the interdependency between individuals and
their aggregate power to achieve particular outcomes through sharing infor
mation, knowledge, and skills can be considered to be the result of a collect
ive agency based on the interactive dynamics existing across individual
agents (Bandura, 2006).
Some Marxist-influenced scholars deny individual or personal agency
(Mokyr, 2015), and within the field of urban and regional development
theory an increased emphasis has been given to the role of collective agency
through networks of individual agents and actors (Bristow and Healy, 2014;
Cumbers et al., 2016). However, the balance of particular forms of agency is
likely to vary across cities and regions precisely due to differing psychocul
tural behavioural conditions. Indeed, Bandura (2006) suggests that ‘success
ful functioning’ requires an agentic blend of the three forms, and while he is
mainly referring to the functioning of individuals, it is likely that such a
blend is also necessary for the successful functioning of cities and regions.
Behavioural action will clearly result in a myriad of activities, and from
the perspective of urban and regional development it is important to pin
point actions in the form of human agency that may impact on the develop
ment outcomes of a city or region. In this case, such agency refers to
intentional action initiated through personal, proxy, or collective means that
may either positively or negatively determine subsequent urban and regional
development outcomes. Therefore, it is proposed that:
Proposition 2.4
The actualized behaviour of individuals and collectives of individuals within
cities and regions will result in particular forms of human agency that
underpin the development systems and trajectories of these cities and
regions.
Bandura’s (2001) agency forms are useful for considering urban and regional
development in terms of highlighting the general types of action that may or
may not take place. However, it is also possible to give consideration to the
forms of agency that can impact upon development within cities and regions.
These are explored in more depth in Chapter 4, but are summarized here as
entrepreneurial agency, political agency, and labour agency. Aligning these
more specific forms of agency with Bandura’s (2001) generic forms, it is pos
sible to conceptualize them as a matrix of behavioural agency for urban and
regional development. This Behavioural Agency Matrix, presented in
Figure 2.1, examines the extent to which these specific forms of agency
related to urban and regional development intersect with the types of agency
stemming from the field of psychology, especially Bandura’s (2001) three-
fold taxonomy.
Proposition 2.5
The rate and forms of development across cities and regions will depend on
the nature of the human agency employed within these cities and regions.
Personal Agency Proxy Agency Collective Agency
Entrepreneurial Individual Entrepreneurial

Investors
Agency Entrepreneurs Networks
Funders and
Political
Political Agency Political Leaders Supporters of
Parties/Groups
Political Leaders
Worker and Workers and

Worker and
Labour Agency Community Community
Community Groups
Leaders Members
Figure 2.1 Behavioural agency matrix.
2.5 The Nature and Source of Power
Coupled with agency, the role of power—especially the ability to deploy and
exercise agency—is vital if changes resulting in improved economic develop
ment are activated. Initial institutional work in economic geography tended
to concentrate heavily on factors relating to interaction and collaboration
between firms, somewhat ignoring interactions with the potential for con
flict between societal groups within regions (Cumbers et al., 2003). In this
sense, Allen (2003) highlights the importance of distinguishing between the
possession of power and the exercise of power, as only the latter is likely to be
the basis for achieving material effects. Power might be held by an agent, but
it can only be fully exercised through the fluid social relations established
with others. Nevertheless, where agents hold power they are in a position to
influence the direction of development. Therefore, it is necessary to examine
the power relations and mechanisms that allow these agents to capture value
(Cumbers and MacKinnon, 2011). For example, within their analysis of an
oil refinery on the east coast of England, Ince et al. (2015) highlight the par
ticular role of the ‘spatialized power relations’ generated by labour agency,
with such agency taking the form of not only localized actions but also trans
national forms of agency. Such power is exercised through a number of pos
sible modes: domination; expertise; coercion; manipulation; seduction; and
negotiation and persuasion (Allen, 2003).
Although power is often examined from the perspective of labour and
capital relations, issues of unequal power can affect the agency of other
groups. For example, within innovation and production collaborations,

small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are often dominated by larger
firms (Tödtling and Kaufman, 2001). Other groups within cities and regions
that may experience power conflicts include local elites such as business
leaders and state managers; the private and public sectors; and the owners of
foreign capital and domestic enterprises (Cumbers et al., 2003). Power divi
sions can also exist between regions, such as the relationship between dom
inant core regions and more peripheral locations (Massey, 2001). Overall,
the importance of power from social relations can be clearly perceived, but a
further consideration is the source of this power.
To explore the source of power it is useful to draw further on some of the
analyses undertaken within the labour geography literature. For example,
Coe and Jordhus-Lier (2011) highlight four sets of wider relations within
which the power of labour agency can be considered: global production net
works; the state; the community; and labour market intermediaries. The
development of interconnected global production networks has a potentially
considerable impact on the power of workers, such as reducing their agency
in cases where competition is high, leading to the growing presence of pre
carious employment (Coe, 2013). Labour market intermediaries have an
impact on the relationship between labour, capital, state, and community.
Employment may become more fragmented in terms of: employers (admin
istratively); employee contracts (contractually); and shift patterns (tempor
ally) (Lier, 2009). From a cultural and behavioural perspective, such
employment is often filled by migrants, and this fragmentation may hinder
collective action, thereby reducing power and making existing employer
power harder to navigate (Datta et al., 2007).
On the other hand, workers with scarce skills may enjoy a privileged pos
ition within global production networks, providing them with considerable
power (Silvey, 2003). This reflects the assets and resources utilized by actors
to support adaptation, which include land; social capital; ethnic symbolic
capital; political capital; cash inflows; and human capital (MacKinnon, 2017).
Such asset utilization reflects Allen’s (2003) notion of exercising power
through the accumulation of expertise, as long as effective modes of negoti
ation and persuasion are also in place. In general, the contextual influences
on power can be both temporal and spatial in nature, with differing labour–
capital relations across groups of workers often leading to considerable dis
parities in power (Castree et al., 2004; Rutherford and Holmes, 2007).
Interestingly, the state has often been overlooked in labour geography
studies (Castree, 2007), but it clearly has a key role for the development of
institutions based on the regulatory framework it provides (Peck, 2001), with
one outcome being that it can weaken the power of labour (Coe and
Kelly, 2002). This may lead to workers having quite different power positions
according to the institutional and regulatory frameworks present (Coe et al.,
2009). However, decisions of the state can influence labour agency well
beyond the labour market, in terms of other services it provides and sup
ports (McDowell, 2009). It is also an employer itself, and workers can obtain
‘symbolic power’ if their cause gathers support from the electorate (Webster
et al., 2008). Changes in state regulations that previously protected workers,
and greater outsourcing, along with the rise of global production networks,
have often left workers looking for alternative sources of support to facilitate
collective and individual agency (Pike, 2007; Coe and Jordhus-Lier, 2011).
Also, the state is not a cohesive whole but is assembled from a large number
of actors with a combination of competing priorities, with often no clear
boundary between society and state (Jones, 2012). Therefore, institutional
change may come from groups in society based on their power and status,
legitimized by underlying institutions (Cumbers et al., 2003).
Jones et al. (2013) analyse developments in behavioural change policies to
illustrate how particular agents within and outside government develop
power through social relations that allow them to push particular agendas
and policies through a combination of dominance, coercion, and negotiation.
Such policies have been seen by some as the state using power through a
mode of manipulation to achieve the government’s own objectives (Whitehead
et al., 2011; Pykett, 2013). Given concerns as to how behavioural-change
policies may be wielded by those with power, it is argued that there should
be openness and transparency with regard to their formulation and imple
mentation (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008).
The above arguments make clear that human agency is responsible for the
creation of the very institutions that underpin the development systems of
regions and cities. However, the extent to which this agency is effective in
generating institutional or even wider cultural change is dependent on the
power of individuals and groups. Such power is itself determined by social
relations, context (development), and institutions. As power is based on
social relations, it is not constant but temporal in nature. The following can
therefore be proposed:
Proposition 2.6
The power possessed and exercised by individuals or groups will determine
the extent to which agency can influence the type and evolution of institu-
tional filters within cities and regions.
2.6 Towards a Behavioural Theory of Urban and

Regional Development
Both evolutionary and institutional economic geography have attempted to

provide an understanding of the factors that determine the development of
urban and regional places. However, such thinking has often taken a some
what narrow view of the concept of development (Pike et al., 2009), and fur
thermore has not fully accommodated the different levels and layers of
interaction required to incorporate agentic influences (Pike et al., 2015). In
response, it is argued here that the economic and social fortunes of cities and
regions are partly determined by the behaviour and human agency of the
individuals and collectives of individuals located in these places. Also, such
behaviour and agency are proposed to be based on a rationality that is spa
tially bounded. In particular, through the prevailing forms of culture, person
ality psychology, and institutions, cities and regions themselves produce a
spatially bounded rationality. Such spatially bounded rationality determines
the forms and types of human agency apparent in a given city or region, and
subsequently the nature and rate of development. Clearly, such development
will be an outcome of factors related to the structure of industry, nature of
governance, resource allocation, and so on. However, a behavioural insight
into the determinants of urban and regional development suggests that these
factors are themselves linked to the human agency resulting from the psych
ocultural behavioural dimensions manifest in any city or region.
Throughout this chapter various streams of literature have been used to
generate a set of propositions that can be configured to produce a behavioural
framework for analysing urban and regional development, which is illustrated
by Figure 2.2. This framework recognizes that urban and regional socio-
spatial culture and personality psychology are interrelated (Proposition 2.1).
Furthermore, the combination of these factors has an important role in deter
mining the nature of the spatially bounded rationality of places, which leads
to particular behavioural intentions (Proposition 2.2). However, the extent to
which these behavioural intentions are translated into actual behaviour is
influenced by the institutional filters associated with rules, regulations, and
their enforcement within a city or region (Proposition 2.3). Behaviour that is
actualized and purposive will result in human agency that produces actions,
or reproduces actions, by individuals or groups (Proposition 2.4).
This agency will be manifest through particular forms with the potential
to impact on development trajectories (Proposition 2.5). In order to realize
this potential, individuals or groups must have access to power through their
Socio-
Spatial
Culture
Proposition 2
Proposition 4 Proposition 5
Institutional Filter Urban and

Behavioural
Proposition 1 Proposition 3 Behaviour Agency Regional
Intentions
Development
Proposition 2
Personality
Psychology
Power
Proposition 6
Figure 2.2 A behavioural framework for analysing urban and regional development.
social positions and network relations (Proposition 2.6). The framework,

therefore, recognizes the role of institutions and agency, and that both are
influenced by one another, as shown by the feedback loop in Figure 2.2.
Similarly, it may be possible to influence the types of intended behaviour that
enter the system via policies and interventions that interact with psychocul
tural factors. This means that in the long term this feedback loop is likely to
extend further, slowly reshaping the cultural and personality traits of a city
or region. As such, interventions are themselves dependent on institutional
change, which is itself a function of agency and power.
In conclusion, this chapter has sought to respond to two limitations within
existing theories of urban and regional development. First, theorizing has
traditionally focused on downstream explanations relating to resources and
capital, their allocation and accumulation, alongside the structure, systems,
organization, and dynamics of urban and regional economies. While provid
ing significant insights, the embedded and human sources of these relation
alities and resources have not been integrated into such theorizing to any
great extent. Second, although scholarly work on the impact of culture and
institutions has shown the importance of identifying the mechanisms that
link these influences to economic and other outcomes (Guiso et al., 2006),
this work has not always accounted for the behavioural aspects behind these
mechanisms. As a result, it can be argued that there is considerable potential
for urban and regional theory to engage further with more upstream behav
ioural explanations of long-term evolutionary patterns of development.
Psychocultural behavioural patterns, and their evolution, provide a basis for
understanding the type and nature of human agency that exists within cities
and regions. Such agency, along with the power that allows its application, is
likely to be one of the key rooted drivers associated with more traditional
downstream explanatory causes underlying uneven urban and regional
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
whose methods are worked out on a mahogany desk, with pen and
ink, or more often, perhaps, by dictation to a stenographer.
Years of careful thought and study, and the expenditure of much
time and many thousands of dollars in developing the Corning
Method have eliminated all necessity for experimental expenditure.
The building up of an Egg Farm is within the reach of any man who
will follow the Corning plan herein described faithfully and
persistently.
The man or woman who determines to pursue some branch of the
poultry industry must first decide what particular branch.
Shall it be to raise poultry for market?
If so, what? Squab Broilers? Soft Roasters? Or Capons?
Perhaps all of these.
Some utility line is the best to start with.
Fresh, sanitary eggs are a necessity and command the highest
price in the market, daily, for spot cash, just as readily as stocks and
bonds command a daily cash value in any financial market. There
can be no better proof of the truth of this than the success of The
Corning Egg Farm.
PULLET RANGE &
COLONY HOUSES
EACH HOUSE 6′ × 10′
BUILT ON SKIDS
MOVABLE
In whatever line a beginner decides to start he needs to go straight

down that line without deviation, taking as his motto, “This one thing I
do.” In the fullness of time, having established a reputation for the
quality of his eggs and birds, the demand for his eggs for hatching
purposes and for his birds as foundation stock for other people, will
naturally come to him, and it is very profitable.
One certain fact should be settled in the understanding of every
beginner, to wit: it is not possible to invest from five hundred to five
thousand dollars in the Poultry Industry and double your money in
the first year, or even to earn 50% on the investment. Neither is it
possible with $300.00 to build a Laying House with a capacity for five
hundred birds, if the house is properly built for warmth and meets
sanitary conditions.
Housing for hens must be free from dampness. Concrete absorbs
dampness, therefore, avoid it.
Any person starting in the poultry industry for profit, and, intending
to follow it for a livelihood should begin in a small way, realizing that,
like any other business venture, it must be built up and grow from
year to year, and that, certainly for the first year, no money can be
drawn out for living expenses.
These statements are made clearly and emphatically because
quite the contrary has been given out as a fact. Such reckless
representations, because untrue, are misleading and injurious to
both those engaged in the poultry industry and also to those who
contemplate entering it, and should be branded as false, and the
authors of such statements should be prohibited from using the
United States Mails.
We are not, and make no pretense of being, philanthropists. We
have written this Book primarily with the expectation that it will make
The Corning Egg Farm and the Corning Method of Poultry Culture
even more widely and impressively known to the World, and so
benefit us by increased demand for our stock, eggs, and all other
goods we may have for sale.
Secondly, we know that the Book will benefit others if they will
follow the Corning Method and System herein laid down, and so
prove of mutual advantage to readers and authors as well.
The Single Comb White Leghorn is par excellence the Egg
Machine, provided always first class and the best strain of birds is
procured, and the Corning Strain, without doubt or question, is the
very best strain of Single Comb White Leghorns yet developed
anywhere in the World.
We know this new, large, complete and thoroughly up to date
Book will be the means of bringing us, and our unequaled Strain of
Single Comb White Leghorns, into favor with thousands of people
who, as yet, do not know us, just as the publishing of the small and
older booklet put us into touch with other thousands who are now
doing a prosperous business by the use of this same Corning Strain
Single Comb White Leghorns, and by following the Corning Method
now more completely elaborated and explained in “The Corning Egg
Farm Book by Corning Himself.”
Edward and Gardner Corning.
The Corning Egg Farm,

Bound Brook, New Jersey.
December, 1911.
The Corning Egg Farm Book
CHAPTER I
The Building of the Corning Egg Farm
Having determined, in 1905, to engage in some business
connected with the feathered tribe, we decided to try out the squab
proposition versus market poultry. After searching over a period of
many months, in various parts of the country, with the idea of finding
a place where the existing buildings might be utilized for our needs,
we finally were obliged to abandon this idea and purchased, early in
the year 1906, twelve and a half acres of land, now known as Sunny
Slope Farm. This property lies about two miles west of Bound Brook,
New Jersey, which town is reached by the Central Railroad of New
Jersey, the Baltimore & Ohio, the Philadelphia & Reading and the
Lehigh Valley Railroads, and the Farm is most accessible, as it is on
the trolley line which connects Bound Brook and Somerville.
In the early Spring of 1906 we began our buildings, erecting a
house, for raising squabs, which would accommodate five hundred
pairs of breeding birds, a hen house of the scratching shed variety,
capable of accommodating some two hundred and fifty hens, and a
work-shop with living apartments for the resident man.
We also sunk a well one hundred and seventeen feet deep,
erecting over it a sixty foot wind-mill tower, which carries an eighteen
hundred gallon tank. From this pipes were laid to convenient parts of
the property.
Three hundred pairs of Homer pigeons were placed in the house
built for that purpose, and we went diligently to work to prove that
this was the quick and easy way to wealth which the ingenious
writers of squab literature proved so conclusively on paper.
On the chicken side of the experiment we seemed to lean
(possibly because of the fact that squabs take one into the slaughter
house business) towards one or more of the market breeds, and, to
meet the needs of this part of the business, we understood that any
of the “Rock” family were best for the purpose.
Started with 60 Buff Rock Eggs

We purchased an incubator with the capacity of sixty eggs, being
fearful of attempting the operation of a larger machine, because, like
a great many novices, we had the feeling that an incubator was a
very dangerous thing, and that anyone without a vast amount of
experience should not attempt to handle it. We placed in this
diminutive machine sixty Buff Rock eggs, and obtained a very fair
hatch. With daily contact our fear of the machine decreased, and we
exchanged it for one with a capacity of one hundred and twenty-five
eggs, and this, in turn, was exchanged for one holding two hundred
and fifty eggs.
INTERIOR STERILE LAYING HOUSE NO. 3 IN 1910
We obtained fairly large flocks of youngsters that season, but, as

we had the usual hallucination that poultry culture was really a
miracle, and required neither work, capital, nor brains, that all you
had to do was to accept the profit and the chickens did it all
themselves, we did not get so very far. The growth of the birds was
so slow they did not reach a profitable weight until the broiler market
had dropped the price to its lowest level. The pullets which we
carried through the winter never produced an egg, for the simple
reason that we had never studied the question out as to how the hen
produces an egg. In other words, our lack of knowledge of the right
methods was the reason for charging up a considerable loss instead
of profit so far as the first season’s work with hens went.
We very early discovered there must have been a considerable
amount of fiction in the writings on the squab industry. One reads
that a pair of pigeons eats nothing like the amount of food which is
required for one hen, and that they never eat more than their exact
wants require, and that when they have young in the nest, this
amount is very slightly increased. We found, however, that they ate
in season and out of season. In fact one recalls, in this connection,
and with considerable amusement, the song, in the light opera
“Wang,” of the elephant who ate all day and the elephant who ate all
night.
During our work with pigeons we tried out a number of different
varieties: Homers, Dragoons, Runt Dragoon crosses, Homer Runt
crosses, Maltese Hens, and the various crosses with Runt
Dragoons; also Carneaux. We were led to buy these fancy breeds
through the stories of extreme prices paid for large squabs, and we
bred some heavy weights only to find, from the commission man
who made a specialty of these birds, that it was impossible to pay
the price which such birds were really worth, as trade for this class
was extremely limited.
Very early in our experience we realized that the poultry side of
our experiment was very much more to our liking and offered so
much greater and more profitable outlook for our energies that we
rang down the curtain on Squab raising—and turned our attention
exclusively to the Hen.
While our minds were still running in the line of poultry for market
purposes we tried out the Black Orpingtons, the idea being that, on
account of their size, they would make ideal roasting fowls. We
found, however, that they were a very much inbred variety, and it
was almost impossible to hatch the eggs. Out of one hundred eggs,
for which we paid twenty dollars, eight chicks hatched, and these
were not of sufficient vitality to live.
ENTRANCE TO THE FARM IN 1909
More Money in Eggs

During all this time, however, we were studying the poultry
question, and had arrived at the conclusion that there was more
money in eggs, properly produced and marketed, than in any other
branch. One of the difficulties we met with in our investigations was
the fact that so many different writers had such a variety of ideas on
the same subject, and practically no two of them agreed on any
given part of poultry culture. What seemed to us even more
confusing was that, in most cases, the writer summed up his article
by contradicting everything he had said in the previous chapters. We
were finally forced to the conclusion that the raising of poultry had
not yet been reduced to a science, but was almost entirely made up
of guesses. In our investigations, however, we found in the writings
of the late Prof. Gowell, of Maine, an entirely different condition. He
was the first man, so far as our observations went, who worked on
the principle that effect followed cause, in poultry as in everything
else. We studied his bulletins with great interest, and decided we
would endeavor to prove that the same results gotten by him could
be duplicated by others.
Adopted White Leghorns

We had also been studying the condition of the egg market, so far
as New York and vicinity was concerned, and had found that this
market paid a premium for a white shelled egg. This, then, was the
determining factor in the selection of the breed of fowls, and after
gathering all the information we could regarding birds which laid
white eggs, we were satisfied, taking everything into consideration,
that for an Egg Farm, the Single Comb White Leghorn, was the only
fowl.
In the Spring of 1907 we collected a breeding pen, from different
sources, of thirty Single Comb White Leghorn yearling hens, and
three strong, vigorous cockerels. We purchased an incubator holding
three hundred and ninety eggs, and three out-door brooders, and
built a number of small Colony Houses to move the birds into as
soon as they were large enough to be transferred from the brooders.
The hens chosen for the initial breeding pen of the Farm were most
carefully selected, for even then we had in mind the result which we
intended to reach, as to the ultimate type of layer on the Farm. We
placed the resulting eggs from this breeding pen in the incubator,
using a primitive turning machine to keep them in proper condition
until the requisite number was acquired to fill the incubator. Our
hatch was a very good one, and we succeeded in raising a fair
number of the youngsters hatched.
During the Summer we erected what is now known on the Farm as
the No. 1 Laying House. This was built one hundred feet long, by
twelve feet wide, and on the same twenty foot section construction
which has proved to be so successful a plan for poultry houses. The
one mistake in this house was its width, and that has now been
remedied by widening it to the standard, sixteen feet in width, and
sixty feet in length have been added to it.
The youngsters on range grew rapidly. We marketed the cockerels
at between eight and ten weeks of age, and they weighed from one
and a quarter pounds to a pound and three quarters. These were
sold “on the hoof,” as we had decided for the future to do nothing in
the slaughter house line, and to this decision we have strictly
adhered, shipping alive also all culls and birds of any age showing
imperfections, the majority of our stock finding ready market for
breeding purposes when we are ready to dispose of it.
As a correct record of the mortality of our hatching, and the
number of cockerels marketed, had been kept, we found that we
should have in the Colony Houses about two hundred and twenty-
five pullets to place in No. 1 House.
In catching up the birds we found that the number figured on was
about right. These two hundred and twenty-five birds went into the
House, October 31st. They were already laying on the Range.
First Use of Roosting Closets

It was a very interesting sight to us to watch these birds at work in
the first house which had ever been successfully built without
partitions, in other words, one large flock with the run of the entire
house. Others had tried it, and had failed. They had had draughts,
and had found the house, therefore, very undesirable. We conceived
the idea of roosting closets, with a partition extending some little
distance beyond the dropping boards, running from the ceiling to the
floor, thus breaking the house up so far as extended circulation of air
went, and at the same time giving the birds the benefit of the larger
area.
It was also a matter of great interest to two novices to watch the
egg output in this first house. On the first day of November five eggs
were gathered; on the second, seven; the third saw a drop to four. Of
course these pullets had been giving us more eggs than this on the
Range, but a transfer from one place to another always means a set-
back to a layer.
The middle of the month saw the hens producing above seventeen
eggs a day. December was started with an output of forty, and from
that the birds ran into larger numbers daily until the last of
December, when, with the mercury registering well down around
zero, they were turning out one hundred eggs a day. The increase in
the egg output continued steadily, and we found that March was the
record month, but the highest single day was in April, when the pen
produced one hundred and seventy eggs.
AS YOU APPROACH THE CORNING EGG FARM FROM THE PUBLIC

HIGHWAY,
IN 1911
Showing 264-Foot Brooder House, Breeding Cockerel House and Office
We were well satisfied with the result of the Winter’s work with
these pullets, and, although we did not have the knowledge that has
since come to us in feeding for eggs, the output was a most
creditable one, and we found a ready market at a good price.
Early in the Fall we had mapped out our plans for a very decided
increase in plant for the coming season. The excavation for the
Incubator Cellar, sixteen by fifty feet, had been made, and the
Brooder House above it was enclosed without difficulty before
weather of any great severity overtook us. We were blessed with a
very late Fall, and mild weather continued, with only occasional dips,
well into December, 1907.
We installed in the Cellar ten incubators, with a capacity of three
hundred and ninety eggs each. The Brooder House, with its
arrangement for Hovers and Nursery pens, was all completed, and
the month of March found us placing eggs in the machines.
In the Fall of 1907 we had enlarged our Breeding House, so that
we were able to place in it some two hundred and fifty breeders. Out
of our original pen of thirty, we had lost two. From different sources
we bought yearling hens, and with our original twenty-eight, made up
the breeding pen.
Of course, as we had planned to endeavor to produce some three
thousand pullets for the Fall of 1908, we were obliged to very
materially supplement the product of our own breeders, with eggs
from other sources, and this we did, buying eggs from different
breeders, in widely separated territories.
As the hatching season advanced we added one more incubator
to our battery of ten, and we placed in these incubators a total of
eleven thousand eight hundred and four eggs, of which two
thousand and ninety-six showed dead germs and clear eggs on the
fourteenth day test.
The resulting number of chicks placed in the Brooder House was
five thousand eight hundred and sixty-six for the entire season.
We found that the eggs purchased did not produce anything like
the number of chicks, that is, strong, livable chicks, that did the eggs
coming from our own breeding pen, which proved to us that the
method of feeding and caring for breeding stock, pursued by others,
fell very far short of the results gotten by our own methods.
We Count Only Livable Chicks

The lesson of incubation, which it is so difficult to make people
understand, is not so much a question of how many chicks may be
hatched from a given number of eggs as of how many strong, livable
chicks are brought out. We very early in our hatching experience
decided to count only those chicks, which were strong, and
apparently capable of a steady growth and a sturdy maturity. Thus,
the count of the number of chicks produced, does not really show the
number which came out of the shells.
OFFICE BUILDING
We were extremely fortunate in handling the youngsters in the

Brooder House, and our mortality was very low, and when the
youngsters were placed in the Colony Houses, which had been built
during the early Spring months, and placed out on the Range in
readiness for them, they were a sturdy, vigorous crowd.
Percentage of Cockerels Low

The number of cockerels was very low, and these, as rapidly as
they developed, were taken away from the pullets and placed in a
fattening pen which had been provided, and as our stock was still an
“unknown quantity” in Poultrydom, we marketed the larger part of
them at broiler size.
The pullets came on finely, and the records show that a large
number of them came into eggs when they were a few days over
four months of age.
Through the connivance of an employé we made a heavy loss in
the way of theft, and, when the final round-up of the pullets came, we
found we had one thousand nine hundred and fifty-three.
During the Summer, we had built the No. 2 Laying House, sixteen
feet wide by one hundred and sixty feet long, and in this house the
first fifteen hundred pullets were installed, the balance going into No.
1 Laying House.
A number of visitors had called at the Farm during the Summer of
1908, and we had listened to the different stories of the ease with
which five thousand laying pullets were produced annually, but at the
end of this season we had much more respect for the number five
thousand than we ever had before, and realized very fully what it
meant to produce that number of females each year.
With the placing of these fifteen hundred pullets in this House of
one hundred and sixty feet in length by sixteen feet wide, without
being divided into separate pens, each hen having the entire run of
the House and no more (that is, she did not leave the house for a
yard, but stayed right in that space and did her work), we
accomplished what, from the standpoint of all authorities on the
subject of Poultry, was an impossible thing to do, and have the hen
produce anything. And yet each hen had only two and one third
square feet of floor space, which included the dropping boards.
The secret of being able to work the hen successfully in such a
limited space per bird is in the length of the house. In reality, every
bird has one hundred and sixty feet by sixteen feet in which to
exercise and roam.
The four hundred and fifty-three pullets which were placed in No. 1
Laying House were given the entire run of this house, of one
hundred feet by twelve feet, and yet the Egg Record for the ten
months, in which these birds never left either house, is rather in favor
of the house containing the fifteen hundred pullets. The average
number of eggs per pullet in these houses, from December 1st,
1908, to September 30th, 1909, was 143.25. Many people who had
seen the No. 2 House filled with the fifteen hundred pullets could
hardly believe what they saw.
The Great Flock System Succeeds

The extreme health and great vigor of the birds was evident to
anyone who looked in through the wire doors. Articles were written in
numerous papers stating that the thing was impossible, and that,
before many months, absolute failure would result. But in spite of all
the prophecies the great flock system, in the Corning style House,
proved by its great success, that a decided forward step had been
made in economical management and housing of poultry.
We had gone ahead handling poultry in just the same way that any
business would be handled, plus the scientific study of the anatomy
of the hen, and what it was necessary to breed in order to
accomplish a great success as a producer of large, white, uniform
eggs, with the ability added to that formula, of turning them out in
large quantities.
Callers at the Farm brought very forcibly home to us the fact, then
quite unappreciated by us, that the methods employed, and the
results obtained, were very remarkable from the standpoint of
anything done in Poultry Culture up to that time. It was pointed out
that in almost every other case it was not known by the poultryman
just where he stood at any time of the year, let alone being able to
tell where he stood every day of the year. The success of The
Corning Egg Farm really has that feature as its foundation stone.
Before the close of the ten months of laying of the 1953 pullets we
had received a number of overtures to put our methods and results
into a book, and, after a time, such a book was written. The
tremendous sale and success of that book is now a matter of history,
and the great number of people who were helped to better things in
poultry, and the still greater number of novices who were started on
the road, were enabled, through this book, to reach a success which,
as many of them testify, would have been impossible without it. In
eighteen months over one hundred and forty thousand copies of this
first book were sold. Hundreds of people came to the Farm to find
out for themselves whether or not the statements in the book were
true, and these people found everything, down to the smallest detail,
just exactly as represented.
Foreigners Visit the Farm

The Visitors’ Register, which is kept at the Farm, shows callers
from almost every nook and corner of the Globe. In Scotland, a short
distance from Glasgow, there is now almost a perfect duplicate of
Sunny Slope Farm. The owner, who has twice crossed the ocean
and come to the Farm, states that if you were blindfolded and taken
from Glasgow the three miles out to his property it would be quite
impossible for you to tell whether you were in New Jersey or
Scotland, so absolutely alike are the buildings in every detail.
BREEDING COCKERELS, FALL OF 1909
In England, a short distance from Tunbridge, the Corning Laying

House is again found. At this Farm both White and Black Leghorns
are carried, and the owners write that they are meeting with great
success in following the Corning Method.
Investigated for Germany

Germany sent a man who spent twelve months investigating the
different methods of poultry raising and housing, and he visited all
the plants of any note whatever from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
including Canada, down to the Gulf of Mexico. He did not make his
mission known, and it was only after his return to his native country
that his identity was disclosed. His report is of more than passing
interest to The Corning Egg Farm, as it states that the Method and
System envolved on The Corning Egg Farm surpasses anything that
has as yet come under his observation. The investigator is not only
conversant with what he saw in the line of poultry breeding during his
twelve months’ sojourn in America, but he is thoroughly posted in
regard to everything in Europe.
The pullets were hardly placed in the Nos. 1 and 2 Laying Houses,
in the Fall of 1908, before we began to plan for the Spring of 1909.
We had enlarged the Breeding House again, so that we now had
housed some four hundred and seventy-five yearling and two year
old hens. These were made up from our breeding pen of the year
before, and as many of our two hundred and twenty-five pullets as
qualified. We bought a few other yearling hens from different
sources, and likewise the necessary complement of cockerels.
Selection of Cockerels
We gave great care to the selection of the males heading the
breeding pen, every bird having perfect head points, being strong
and vigorous, and as large as we could find him, where we felt sure
that no outside blood had been introduced.
The Brooder House during the Fall, was materially added to,
giving us twenty Hover Pens, three feet wide, and twelve Nursery
Pens, each nearly five feet wide, this giving us a Brooder House 118
feet long by 16 feet wide.
We again this year (1909) supplemented our own breeding pen
with purchases of eggs from different sources.
Pullets Lay in 129 Days

Our hatches this Spring were very successful, and the chicks
which went up into the Brooder House were strong and vigorous.
The mortality was low, and when placed on Range they grew rapidly.
The pullets came into eggs, as they had in the two previous years,
within a few days after they passed the four months’ mile-stone.
We had added some six Colony Houses to our range equipment.
The building originally designed for pigeons we planned to change
over into a Breeding House, for, in the Fall of 1909, we would have a
sufficient number of yearling hens to carry quite a breeding
establishment. This house was about completed in the month of
May, when it mysteriously took fire, and was a complete loss.
Fortunately the fire broke out at about ten o’clock in the morning,
and, by the timely assistance of the boys of the Wilson Military
Academy, under the able direction of the Military Officers of that
Academy, we were able to confine it to this one building in spite of
the fact that a high wind was blowing, which carried the sparks
directly on to the other buildings. The water supply on the Farm
proved more than adequate to the necessities of the occasion, and
the loss was entirely covered by insurance.
As we desired to recognize the services of the young men, and at
the suggestion of the Commanding Officer, medals were struck off
commemorative of the fire and of the bravery displayed by these
young men at this time, and were presented to them.
An addition to the Breeding House, extending over the site of the
burned building, was immediately erected, and the small building
which had been used as a fattening pen for cockerels was rebuilt,
and became the breeding pen for the production of unrelated
cockerels.
Also during this season the No. 3 Laying House was built, this
being an exact duplicate of the No. 2 House.
Our selection of Breeders for 1910 was of course made from the
birds which had completed their first ten months of pullet laying, in
the houses Nos. 1 and 2. The mortality during these months had
been about 7 per cent. With our method of selection only 950 of
these birds qualified to be used as yearling breeders, and these
were placed in the Breeding House which had been prepared for
them. We had made a most careful selection of cockerels, and these
we had reared in two Colony Houses, placed in a large yard, where
we were planning to eventually erect a Cockerel House for the
housing of cockerels specially selected for breeders.
The balance of the birds from Nos. 1 and 2, together with our
breeders of 1909, were sold, and we were able to face the hatching
season of 1910 with a very decided step forward towards the
realization of the ideal yearling breeder, which The Corning Egg
Farm is working nearer to each season.
INTERIOR LAYING HOUSE NO. 2 IN 1910
We placed in the Laying Houses Nos. 2 and 3 about 2750 pullets,

and our respect for the man who could successfully, yearly, produce
and raise to maturity five thousand pullets, increased materially.
Keeping Down Labor Bill

The question of keeping down the labor bill on the Farm has at all
times been a matter of careful study, and the machinery which is in
use is of large capacity, enabling us to turn out whatever may be
required in a very short space of time, and allowing the men to get at
other work. As an illustration; the Clover Cutter on the Farm has a
capacity of 3000 pounds an hour, cut in one-fourth-inch lengths,
which enables us, when we are cutting green food, to turn out the
amount required for the day, fill the tubs, and have it on the way to
the Laying Houses, in less than fifteen minutes.

A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development The Uneven Evolution of Cities and Regions Huggins Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development The Uneven Evolution of Cities and Regions Huggins Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Behavioural Theory of Economic

Development: The Uneven Evolution of

A Behavioural Theory of Economic

Robert Huggins and Piers Thompson

To Angela, from Rob

2.1. Behavioural agency matrix 28

4.1. Agents of innovation, transformation, and development for a cross

xii List of Tables

8.2. Proportion of self-employed by whether community culture dimensions

1.1 The Motivation and Rationale for the Book

This book is motivated by a belief that theories of economic development

2 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

in­di­vid­uals are situated are fundamentally intertwined. The problem for

4 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

1.2 Behaviour and the Development Problem

Although growing inequalities can be observed across cities and regions

upon urban and regional development outcomes. Furthermore, the nature of

1.3 The Fundamentals of Behaviour and Development

As a way of sketching the fundamental issues and concepts relating to the

6 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

psychology at the individual level and the socio-spatial culture of a city or

understand differing types of behaviour and their relationship with development

8 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

development, agents will shape the structure, organization, and dynamics of

1.4 Empirically Testing the Theory

In order to fully examine the association between the nature of concepts

10 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

development of cities and regions, it is necessary to establish an empirical

economic development. There are a number of different measures of agency

1.5 Modelling and Addressing Behaviour and

Building upon both the theoretical and empirical analysis, in Chapter 9 we

12 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

in the form of unionism (Holmes, 2006), and preferences against redistribu-

Theories of urban and regional development are predominately based on

16 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

A behavioural approach to examining development is not, however, strictly

Human Behaviour and the Development of Cities and Regions 17

communities (Bristow and Healy, 2014). As Mokyr (2015) suggests, once

2.2 Psychocultural Behaviour: Socio-Spatial Culture

18 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

Human Behaviour and the Development of Cities and Regions 19

behaviour (Huggins and Thompson, 2015a, 2016). In related studies it has

20 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

Although the majority of work on personality psychology has examined

Human Behaviour and the Development of Cities and Regions 21

traditions and social norms; selective migration; and physical environment.

22 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

underlying personality traits of individuals influencing overall socio-spatial

The interaction between psychological and cultural factors underpins the

2.3 Behavioural Intentions and the Institutional Filter

Behavioural intentions refer to behaviour that is planned but not necessarily

Human Behaviour and the Development of Cities and Regions 23

determines behaviour at the urban and regional level. As MacKinnon et al.

24 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

Human Behaviour and the Development of Cities and Regions 25

2.4 Human Agency

The contribution of institutionalism in economic geography has helped pro­

26 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

motivation embodied in individual agents to achieve particular outcomes

Human Behaviour and the Development of Cities and Regions 27

28 A Behavioural Theory of Economic Development

Personal Agency Proxy Agency Collective Agency

Entrepreneurial Individual Entrepreneurial

2.1. Behavioural agency matrix 28

individuals are situated are fundamentally intertwined. The problem for

The contribution of institutionalism in economic geography has helped pro