The synergy of tacit knowledge spillover: Ensuring informal agglomerations

This paper is an attempt to examine role and significance of knowledge spillover as a dominant factor influencing informal industrial agglomeration formation. The study is confined to the Gems and Jewellery industry in West Bengal which produces skill-based quality products of jewellery ornaments. The study observes that the stochastic pattern of skill-deterministic labour migration of the industry provides one explanation to the question: how rural resources (skills) reaches urban, even global, destinations -however, labour mobility processes become insufficient to explain agglomeration of production units to specific geographical spaces and growth of the spatial agglomerations. Vertical (hierarchical) mobility by the return migrants may be another approach to explain the case, however, knowledge spillover and knowledge externality appears to be more acceptable explanation for informal agglomerations of the industry in specific sites and growth of the existing agglomerations of the industry.