Leadership and institutional factors in endogenous regional economic development

This paper proposes that a virtuous circle for the sustainable developmentof a city or region is achieved through a process whereby proactive and strongleadership and effective institutions enhance the capacity and capability of a place tobetter use its resource endowments and gain an improved market fit in becomingcompetitive and being entrepreneurial. It is proposed that the performance of a city orregion at a point in time and the path of its economic development over time may berepresented by its position in a Regional Competitiveness Performance Cube. Thepaper proposes a new model framework whereby a city or region’s economic developmentand performance is an outcome dependent on how its resource endowmentsand market fit as quasi-independent variables are mediated by the interaction betweenleadership, institutions, and entrepreneurship as intervening variables. The experiencesof a number of case study cities from a variety of settings in the US, Europe,Asia and Australia are explored within that framework.