PROGRESS IN STUDIES OF INDUSTRIAL CLUSTER

Over the past decade, industrial clusters have become increasingly important to achieving competitiveness in the context of globalization and informationlization. And there has been growing interest in the industrial cluster, not only by economic geographers but also by economists and by policy-makers. This paper aims to make a review of the progress in the study of industrial cluster. This paper's concerns relate to the progress of the cluster concept, the reasons why Porter's idea so popular, and the characters of the industrial cluster.And then we divide the characters of industrial cluster into four major research themes, i.e. agglomeration,social cluture,innovation network and institution.