Industrialization Pathways to Human Development

Oyebanke Oyelaran-Oyeyinka

Industrial cluster literature has traditionally focused on work-place upgrading, clusters' ability to promote firm productivity, economic growth, and benefits that firm owners can or will give to workers. However, even in growing, productive clusters, such a work-place focus leaves out questions about how to situate the contribution of the firm and cluster in improving living standards in the wider socio-economic and spatial context of the region. By providing a systematic examination of the relationship between industrial clusters and poverty analyzed within a multidimensional frame, this dissertation attempts to close this bridge. It asks under what conditions firms in productive clusters pass on benefits to workers in ways that improve their living standards, even when they are not required by law to do so. Three hypotheses are put forward. First, firms in their own interest boost...