Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to the staff at Palgrave Macmillan and the anonymous referees for providing us with helpful feedback.

We are most grateful to David A. Clark.

We are extremely grateful to Prof. Santosh Mehrotra and Prof. Emeritus Giacomo Becattini for writing the foreword and prologue to our book, and for explicitly linking it to crucial arguments stemming from their globally recognized thinking.

Over the last years, we have been privileged to receive comments and suggestions on various drafts of the book from several colleagues, all of which have been extremely useful and insightful. In particular, we would like to thank Andrea Agostinucci, Marco Bellandi, Giovanni Camilleri, Johannes Krassnitzer, Mauro Lombardi, Andrea Noferini, Alessandro Preti and Franco Volpi.

Our book has also benefited from the support and inspiration of a large number of people. In particular, we are grateful to Sabina Alkire, Caterina Arciprete, Luca Bagnoli, Parul Bakhshi, Jerome Ballet, Roberto Barbieri, Elisabetta Basile, Kaushik Basu, Leonardo Becchetti, Nicolò Bellanca, Patrizio Bianchi, Ugo Biggeri, Alejandra Boni Aristizabal, Carlo Borgomeo, Francesco Burchi, Annalisa Caloffi, Giovanni Canitano, Giancarlo Canzanelli, Giovanna Ceccatelli Gurrieri, Giuseppe Cesari, Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti, Tiberio Chiari, Flavio Comim, Riccardo Crescenzi, David Crocker, Pasquale De Muro, Gabi Dei Ottati, Marco Di Tommaso, Jean- Luc Dubois, Alexander Apsan Frediani, Enrique Gallicchio, Danilo Gam- belli, Gioacchino Garofoli, Des Gasper, Caroline Hart, Donato lacobucci, Simona lammarino, Solava Ibrahim, Javier Iguiniz, Alberto L'Abate, Rossella Lazzeretti, David Lewis, Renato Libanora, Marina Lo Giudice, Filom­ena Maggino, Fabrizia Mealli, Kodjo Mensah-Abrampa, Salvatore Monni, Giacomo Negrotto, Lorenzo Orioli, Hans-Uwe Otto, Antonella Picchio, Julio Portieles, Paolo Ramazzotti, Filippo Randelli, Vittorio Rinaldi, Ingrid Robeyns, Andres Rodriguez-Pose, Amartya K. Sen, Claudia Serrano, Fabio Sforzi, Frances Stewart, Piero Tani, Carlo Trigilia, Claudio Tomasi, Franco Jimmy Torres Suarez, Massimo Toschi, Mozaffar Qizilbash and Muhammad Yunus.

We would also like to thank the ARCO Lab research team: Marco Bellucci, Leonardo Borsacchi, Federico Ciani, Claudio Fedi, Sara Giunti, Dario Marmo, Vincenzo Mauro, Agnese Peruzzi and Enrico Testi. We developed many of the arguments employed in this book while working alongside them and taking advantage of their expertise and creativity.

We wish to thank the Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA), the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE), the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), the European Regional Science Association (ERSA), the Interuniversity Centre of Economics applied to the Policies for Industry, Local Development and Internationalization (c.MET-05) and scholars at the Artimino Meetings on Local Development. The exchange and debate with fellows and participants at the annual conferences of these associations have presented an essential opportunity for deepening and refining our ideas.

The usual disclaimers apply to all of the above.

Last but not the least, we would very much like to thank our families and friends who have supported us throughout the preparation of this book.