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The recent global pandemic renewed the importance of telecommunication infrastructure, as many COVID responses (e.g., working from home, home-schooling, e-commerce) were challenged by the inequity of access to broadband services and its underlying network. This paper examines the geospatial footprint of the National Broadband Network (NBN) in relation to the demographics of Australia's cities and regions. Through data made available by the NBN, which describes the technologies used in its multi-technology mix platform, and published demographic data available via the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), we explore the equity of access to broadband technologies across the nation. The results show a persistent urban-regional divide in the NBN. The paper also offers a brief assessment of the complex and contradictory ways policy responses attempt to mitigate the digital divide, including updates to the national infrastructure project plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in information technologies and vehicle automation have birthed new transportation services, including shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs). Shared autonomous vehicles are on-demand self-driving taxis, with flexible routes and schedules, able to replace personal vehicles for many trips in the near future. The siting and density of pick-up and drop-off (PUDO) points for SAVs, much like bus stops, can be key in planning SAV fleet operations, since PUDOs impact SAV demand, route choices, passenger wait times, and network congestion. Unlike traditional human-driven taxis and ride-hailing vehicles like Lyft and Uber, SAVs are unlikely to engage in quasi-legal procedures, like double parking or fire hydrant pick-ups. In congested settings, like central business districts (CBD) or airport curbs, SAVs and others will not be allowed to pick up and drop off passengers wherever they like. This paper uses an agent-based simulation to model the impact of different PUDO locations and densities in the Austin, Texas CBD, where land values are highest and curb spaces are coveted. In this paper 18 scenarios were tested, varying PUDO density, fleet size and fare price. The results show that for a given fare price and fleet size, PUDO spacing (e.g., one block vs. three blocks) has significant impact on ridership, vehicle-miles travelled, vehicle occupancy, and revenue. A good fleet size to serve the region's 80 core square miles is 4000 SAVs, charging a $1 fare per mile of travel distance, and with PUDOs spaced three blocks of distance apart from each other in the CBD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macro econometrics has been recently affected by the so-called 'Google Econometrics'. Comparatively less attention has been paid to the subject by the regional and spatial sciences where the Big Data revolution is challenging the conventional econometric techniques with the availability of a variety of non- traditionally collected data (such as, e. g., crowdsourcing, web scraping, etc) which are almost invariably geo-coded. However, these unconventionally collected data represent only what in statistics is known as a "convenience sample" that does not allow any sound probabilistic inference. This paper aims at making aware researchers of the consequence of the unwise use of such data in the applied work and to propose a technique to minimize such the negative effects in the estimation of spatial regression. The method consists of manipulating the data prior their use in an inferential context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the externality theory, this paper estimates the city size threshold of specialized agglomeration and diversified agglomeration. We find that when the urban population is below 1.25 million, specialized agglomeration is more advantageous for improving urban labor productivity. When the urban population exceeds 0.9 million, diversified agglomeration is more advantageous for improving urban labor productivity. Moreover, Specialized agglomeration of small and medium-sized cities is more likely to play the role of Marshall-Arrow-Romer externality within the spillover radius of regional central cities. One important policy suggestion is that for areas with small administrative regions and small population, it is better to increase the level of specialized agglomeration through industrial transfer, and for areas with large administrative regions and large population, it is better to increase the level of diversified agglomeration through industrial introduction, so as to further improve the urban economic efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the long-term impacts of the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) mortgage risk assessment maps on the spatial dynamics of recent income and racial distributions in California metropolitan areas over the 1990-2010 period. We combine historical HOLC boundaries with modern Census tract data and apply recently developed methods of spatial distribution dynamics to examine if legacy impacts are reflected in recent urban dynamics. Cities with HOLC assessments are found to have higher levels of isolation segregation than the non-HOLC group, but no difference in unevenness segregation between the two groups of cities are found. We find no difference in income or racial and ethnic distributional dynamics between the two groups of cities over the period. At the intra-urban scale, we find that the intersectionality of residing in a C or D graded tract that is also a low-income tract falls predominately upon the minority populations in these eight HOLC cities. Our findings indicate that neighborhoods with poor housing markets and high minority concentrations rarely experience a dramatic change in either their racial and ethnic or socioeconomic compositions—and that negative externalities (e.g. lower home prices and greater segregation levels) emanate from these neighborhoods, with inertia spilling over into nearby zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the potential responses of international labor mobility to the recent COVID-19 health shocks, using a New Economic Geography model inspired by recent events in Central and North America. The model suggests that the restraining impact of COVID-19 on migratory flows may retain potential emigrants in Mexico and Central America, enlarge the home market in the region, attract foreign and local businesses, and increase real wages. Moreover, this prediction unveils opportunities for the future from the opening of new, regular migratory pathways between Central America and Mexico. These would concentrate population and industry in Mexico, raise the market potential in the area and boost real wages in Mexico – and possibly in Central America as well – despite the partial deindustrialization of the Central American hinterland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue of the International Regional Science Review illuminates the "geography of COVID-19", examining the spatial patterns, distribution, and interconnectedness of COVID-19 cases. It explores the regional disparities in infection rates, highlighting how socioeconomic factors, mobility, and healthcare accessibility contributed to these inequalities. The issue is divided into three sections, focusing on regional economic dynamics and labor markets, public health responses and vaccination policies, and social and demographic vulnerabilities. Each section comprises research papers presenting insights and analyses on their respective topics, from labor mobility responses to vaccine hesitancy, job insecurity, regional resilience, and more. This issue underscores the importance of regional science in addressing the multifaceted challenges posed by the pandemic and formulating effective, location-specific strategies to mitigate its impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the economic impact of the three tiers risk framework implemented in Italy against the COVID-19 pandemic during the Autumn of 2020. Exploiting a large-scale dataset encompassing daily credit card transactions mediated by a large Italian bank, we estimate a set of panel event study models to disentangle the impact of restrictions with low, medium and high stringency levels in terms of consumption reduction. We show that space-time differentiated policies tend to produce stronger welfare losses for progressively more stringent restrictions in specific sectors targeted by these policies such as Retail and Restaurants. However, when we compare provinces implementing the same level of policy stringency, we show that territories with higher income per capita and larger concentration of manufacturing and service activities experience both significantly worse economic and epidemiological performances. Overall, our results suggest that policy makers should properly account for local socio-economic characteristics when designing tailored restrictions entailing an equal and homogeneous impact across territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 crisis increased unemployment all over the World, with significant regional heterogeneity. This paper intends to analyze this territorial heterogeneity for the Portuguese case and investigate which regional factors complement personal and job characteristics in explaining individual vulnerability to COVID-19 unemployment. By considering personal, job and regional dimensions, we extended the literature and provided a more comprehensive understanding of this new phenomenon in the immediate and medium-term. Furthermore, this knowledge is essential to support policy suggestions for quick and effective action in preventing job losses in the current and future crises. Detailed information on all individuals that lost their jobs in Portugal 1 year after (and before) the COVID-19 outset was used to estimate three logit models that compare the odds of losing a job after and during the pandemic. Significant territorial heterogeneity of the COVID-19 impact on unemployment is obtained. Along with personal and job characteristics, we conclude that regional characteristics are essential for explaining individual vulnerabilities. In particular, workers are more prompted to lose their jobs if they live in regions with higher population densities, lower pre-crisis unemployment, and more dependable international flow. Conversely, individual and regional human capital investment contributes to protecting employment, revealing the existence of external effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is of the utmost importance for governing bodies worldwide. Its constant increase during the last months is subject of major concern for both citizens and policy makers, as individuals might experience increased feelings of job insecurity due to the pandemic context and to the latest developments on the job market. Job insecurity refers to a perceived threat to the continuity and stability of employment as it is currently experienced and has a negative impact on the individuals' quality of life. Many researches have linked job insecurity with low levels of well-being and high levels of stress, as well as local or national measures taken in job creation and job retention. Aside from individual factors, there are other critical influences that should be considered in order to better understand the dynamics of job insecurity against the COVID-19 pandemic. Such influences can come from regional features such as spatial, economic, or demographic characteristics, like gender, age, or education. The aim of the paper is to identify and spatially represent the variations and evolution of job insecurity during the on-going pandemic. Our analyses are based on the PsyCorona database (15.311 participants), a study with self-reported data deployed in countries all around the world, that monitored various psychological variables during the first pandemic waves. For the purpose of this research, data related to the first wave (March-July 2020) was selected. In order to get a better understanding of the spatial distribution of self-reported job insecurity, we chose to focus on eight European countries (France, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Greece, Romania, Spain, and Italy). Respondents from Western Europe countries expressed lower scores on self-reported job insecurity and less variance over time while those from Southern and Eastern Europe displayed higher scores for job insecurity and more variance. Moreover, we found that the higher the overall job insecurity is perceived in a country, the higher the discrepancies between age, gender, and education categories tend to be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the beginning of 2020, the world was left in an unprecedented state of shock by the COVID-19 pandemic. Brazil quickly became the epicenter of new cases of contamination, where the propagation of the virus was unrestrained, despite boasting one of the strongest Universal health coverage systems in Latin America. This paper has at least three empirical contributions to the literature about economic resilience and the COVID-19 pandemic. Firstly it is a critical issue regarding the "economics versus life" trade-off, which is an essential question for developing countries, given that policymakers must decide between policies to reduce the number of COVID-19 infections without damaging the economy. Secondly, our findings suggest that the early adoption of isolation measures applied in 2020, such as the financial aid and the vaccination have been effective in controlling the effects of the pandemic, especially in vulnerable microregions. Furthermore, it was verified that the Emergency financial aid was a fundamental policy in minimizing the economic impacts of the pandemic and allowing people to practice social distancing, contributing positively to the Employment Resilience Index and negatively related to the growth rate of deaths due to COVID-19. The contribution of our study is to measure an inverted U-shaped curve to demonstrate that policymakers must achieve a minimum of families to decrease the COVID-19 deaths. These contributions are essential and straightforward findings to lead policymakers' decisions in developing countries facing financial constraints in the public budget and population reticence about physical distancing, self-quarantine and vaccination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are no theoretical studies in regional science that examine which region to locate in from the standpoint of a creative class member, given that the pertinent regional authorities (RAs) are competing among themselves to attract the creative class using subsidies. This gap provides the motivation for our paper. This paper's contribution is that it is the first to theoretically study the regional location choice of creative class members when the RAs of the locations in which they might locate are using subsidies to attract them. Specifically, a knowledge good producing creative class member must decide which of two regions (A or B) to locate his plant in. This good is produced using a Cobb–Douglas function with creative and physical capital. We analyze plant location in four cases. In the benchmark case, we show that the representative creative class member ought to locate his plant in the less expensive region B. Next, we show that a small subsidy to creative capital by region A switches the plant location decision from region B to A. Finally, when both regions grant identical subsidies to creative capital, the representative creative class member is indifferent between locating in regions A and B. So, for identical subsidies to affect the plant location decision, they are better targeted to physical and not to creative capital. JEL Codes: R11, R58 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using detailed Global Navigation Satellite System tracing data emitted by all trucks having a gross vehicle weight of over 3.5 tons in Belgium, this paper assesses the efficiency of the current Belgian distance tax system by analyzing its spatial coverage and the matching of the distance taxes with the external costs, globally and locally. Specifically, three research questions are addressed. First, how well do the present charge rates match with external costs? Second, the operationalization of the system requires a good spatial coverage of truck movements. Does the present system guarantee an almost universal coverage? Third, do the distance charges match the external costs? We find that if the distance tax scheme differentiates regionally, it still misses large variations in noise costs. The current tracing infrastructure also captures only part of the truck operations on the territory. If distance tolls for trucks remain the backbone of the taxation of truck operations, it then needs further refinement in time and space if one wants it to be the major tool to correct for the external costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper explores the broad influences that stimulate technological change in governmental service delivery. Using panel data by state, we examine whether residents are able to apply for Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits via technology services such as the internet or automated telephone, or are required to apply in person. The reduced form model tests for the relative influence of residential demand, political pressure, and bureaucratic influence. We find that it is the dispersion of the urban population across a state that provides the impetus for government adoption of new technology, in stark contrast to the importance of urban concentration found for the private sector. A unique additional influence we test is the ability of the entrenched bureaucracy to impede technology options. We find that governors of either political party in their term-limited term—when compromise with bureaucrats is less important—save 4% in administrative costs. We find that technology adoption can be delayed but not prevented by bureaucratic interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an improved method for estimating the ethnicity of individuals based on individual level pairings of given and family names. It builds upon previous research by using a global database of names from c. 1.7 billion living individuals, supplemented by individual level historical census data. In focusing upon Great Britain, these resources enable, respectively, greater precision in estimating probable global origins and better estimation of self-identification amongst long-established family groups such as the Irish Diaspora. We report on geographic issues in adjusting the weighting of groups that are systematically under- or over-predicted using other methods. Our individual level estimates are evaluated using both small area Great Britain census data for 2011 and individual level data for asylum seekers in Canada between 1995 and 2012. Our conclusions assess the value of such estimates in the conduct of social equity audits and in depicting the social mobility outcomes of residential mobility and migration across Great Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important issue in economic geography is the link between higher education institutions and economic performance at local level. This paper exploits some aspects of the university funding system in Italy to estimate the effects of hosting higher education institutions on local productivity and furthermore tests whether local institutions have a moderating role in this relationship. The findings firstly confirm that university performance positively affects local economies. Secondly, we argue that an important channel linking universities to greater economic activity is the administrative capacity of local governments to create strong social and economic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how green product and process innovations affect firms' sustainable performance. It seems evident that green innovations should benefit not only society but also the firms, although it is not clearly stated how this relationship works, especially inside clusters. We theorise that green process and product innovations have a curvilinear relationship with firm sustainable performance and that the geographical concentration of clusters has a positive reinforcing role for green product innovations. To test these theoretical expectations, moderated regression and quantile regression were applied to a sample of 175 firms from the Spanish footwear industry. Results confirm that although green innovations do improve performance, they have an inverted "U" shape that makes investments in green innovation less profitable above a certain threshold. In addition, we observe that geographical concentration is stronger for green product innovations since green process innovations need more tacit-based knowledge and internal capabilities, making the cluster effect less significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This focused issue entitled "Universities and Regional Development" contains three papers. All three papers focus on universities and their involvement in translating research for commercialization, which in turn supports economic development that often extends beyond the local region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lacuna in the extant literature and our desire to contribute to the theoretical literature on how tax/subsidy policies can be used by regions to attract the creative class together provide the motivation for this paper. The paper's basic contribution is that it is the first to theoretically analyze competition between two regions (1 and 2) for mobile creative capital, the key attribute possessed by the creative class. Both regions produce a final good using creative and physical capital. In the first case, physical capital is immobile and only region 2 uses tax policy to attract the mobile creative capital. We compute the equilibrium returns to creative and physical capital, we specify a key condition for creative capital in the aggregate economy, and we show which of three tax policies gives region 2 the highest income. In the second case, creative and physical capital are mobile and both regions pursue tax policies to attract mobile creative capital. Once again, we compute the equilibrium returns to creative and physical capital and then describe the optimal taxes for the two regions given that they wish to maximize regional income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) can generate important knowledge spillovers on local economies, fostering regional innovation, especially in developing countries. In this paper, we analyze how regional industrial structure shapes the effects of inward FDI spillovers on the innovative performance of Brazilian regions. Prior literature has analyzed the effects of FDI spillovers on the productivity of host countries' firms, while less attention has been given to the corresponding effects on regional innovation. Thus, we use data on the investments of Multinational Companies in Brazilian regions for 2003-2014 and relate these data to the innovative performance measured by patents. Our results show that inward FDI positively influences innovation at the regional level since Brazilian regions that receive inward FDI present stronger innovative performance. In addition, the positive effects of inward FDI on local innovation are reinforced by the diversity of the regional industrial structure. Diversified regions that receive inward FDI are therefore better able to leverage the benefits of inward FDI spillovers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The promotion of innovation-driven development in lagging regions is currently on the regional policy agenda, so a sound understanding of how learning and innovation can be successful under the conditions there is crucial. In this context, this paper demonstrates the potential of an innovation mode approach at the micro level of regional innovation systems. Based on a conceptual framework on the relationship between knowledge bases and innovation modes in the field of regional development, a systematic literature review is used to analyze whether this potential has already been exploited in previous innovation studies on lagging regions. The results show that some important steps have already been taken in this direction. However, the potential gains in terms of a better understanding of innovation in lagging regions have so far been limited. Against this background, the authors identify several avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last century has been characterised by very fast industrialisation and population growth, causing strong outmigration from the rural territories, further increasing the socio-economic gap between the rural and urban areas. To counteract these problems, a lot of scholars have started studying rural development and the methodologies that could be applied to its evaluation. The main research objective of the present work is to investigate on a worldwide scale how rural development is being evaluated and, more in detail, to study the quantitative indicator-based approaches used for this kind of evaluation. Bibliometric analysis was performed with the aim of understanding in a better way the state of the scientific development of the research topic. Its duality, reflected by the nature of the phenomenon (negative or positive) from which the studies have origin from, has been confirmed. During the process of research has also encountered a new perspective – a more neutral one, with central concept the quality of life. Regarding the study of the quantitative indicator-based approaches, 47 selected papers have been analysed in detail and an extensive database containing 32 dimensions, 72 sub-dimensions and 892 indicators was created. Some universal dimensions and indicators have been encountered, although it cannot be known whether they are truly comparable due to the lack of transparency present in different research. For the future development and dissemination of these approaches, it is necessary to achieve greater transparency in how they are calculated and greater availability of open data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the nexus of wealth effect and cost effect, the impact of housing price on fertility is ambiguous in theory. However, the relation between housing price and fertility is essential for policymakers, especially in developing countries. This paper constructs an individual-level panel data set of over 40,000 randomly selected Chinese females with detailed fertility history during 2006–2010 from the Census 2010. Exploiting variation of housing price growth across cities over time and conditional on marriage status, we show that a 1,000 yuan upward shift in housing price induces the possibility of new birth by 13.9% for homeowners. Homeownership plays a vital role in housing price on fertility. These findings suggest that the wealth effect of housing price dominates the cost effect during the sample periods in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Okun's law is one of the best-known stylized facts in the economic literature, as well as one of the most widely used policy tools. The aim of this paper, which utilizes a comprehensive sample of 265 European regions by using annual observations covering the period from 2000 to 2019, is to deepen our knowledge of Okun's law from two perspectives: on one hand, by checking the existence and intensity of regional differences, and on the other hand, by assessing the factors that explain them. To this end, in the first part, we apply a heterogeneous panel approach that deals with cross-sectional dependence, which allows us to obtain an average coefficient as well as region-specific coefficients. In the second part, a cross-sectional spatial model is used to uncover explanatory factors. Our findings reveal quite remarkable regional differences, as well as a somewhat geographical pattern in them. Moreover, they point out the importance of demographic factors (such as gender and age), labor market variables (share of employment in industry and construction, as well as self-employment and part-time employment and the severity of long-term unemployment), R&D expenditure, and some national institutional factors when it comes to explaining differences across regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how short-term rentals are changing living conditions and the composition of the population in affected parts of a town. First, to analyze the relation between quality, distance, and rents, we develop a spatial monocentric city model with varying housing quality levels. Second, for 200 m grids in the city of Berlin (Germany) in 2019, we show that the proportion of low and medium quality residential units correlates positively near the city center with the probability of Airbnb listings and the number of these listings, but negatively in the suburbs. Third, applying fixed effect and IV strategies, we investigate the impact of Airbnb listings on living conditions and the composition of the population in the almost 450 planning areas of Berlin in the years 2016–2019. We show that Airbnb offers increase the number of residents with long periods of residence and reduce the number of residents in low-quality residential environments, but we do not find above-average effects on socially weak groups. JEL Classification: R21, R31, Z32 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International trade is one of the key spheres of economic policy. It is crucial for a country to understand the dynamics of its export markets to create a coherent strategy to improve its position in global markets. Research in this field is particularly interesting for both economists and policy makers. However, due to a lack of data, most of the well-established literature is focused on the national level. Therefore, there is little evidence on the influence of local characteristics on export markets. This research aims to evaluate the influence of regional factors on the competitiveness of firms in international markets, focussing on the importance of agglomeration economies and location, among other local factors. To identify this influence, this paper studies the case of Brazil. This country offers rich disaggregated information that allows this type of research and displays enormous differences across rural and urban areas. Given these differences, the assumption of homogeneous effects is too restrictive. Therefore, to study the patterns across different territories around the country, Geographically Weighted Generalized Linear Model (GWGLM) method is applied. The results indicate an interaction between location and the influence of several local characteristics such as human capital, the degree of development and the local economic structure. This relationship creates virtuous circles in a few locations where urban agglomerations create a suitable environment for firms, while opposite patterns appear in other locations. JEL codes: F14, R11 and R12 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using bibliometric methods, this paper is aimed at providing an overview of Regional Science publications that address environmental issues. The analysis covers a corpus of 1145 articles that refer to the environment in their title, abstract or keywords and published in 18 journals between 1999 and 2020. Although these publications account for only 6 percent of the articles published in these journals over that period, their number gradually increased. To gain a clearer picture of the environmental issues addressed, we characterise them according to whether an integrative or topical approach is adopted and by their spatial dimensions. This analytical framework is first applied by searching for specific terms in their title, keywords and abstract. The results show that both approaches are equally effective; further, these articles address intraregional or interregional environmental issues more than global environmental issues. Second, we conduct a keyword co-occurrence analysis revealing four coherent thematic article groups treating environmental issues from the perspectives of amenities and migration, governance and policy, innovation and clusters, and land use and urban sprawl. More detailed analyses of each group allowed us to refine our understanding of how environmental issues were addressed. Finally, a cross-cutting view of the four thematic groups suggests that Regional Science approaches environmental issues through spatial disparities and inequalities, spatial interactions and interdependencies, and the spatial dimension of public action. The research perspectives in each of these areas are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban agglomeration (UA), as the carrier of regional economic transformation, is an important impetus for the development of the digital economy (DE) in the future. Based on the perspective of the spatial structure of UA, this paper first attempts to clarify the theoretical aspects of the influence of the spatial structure on DE, its heterogeneous characteristics, and inner impact mechanism, and then empirically test the corresponding hypotheses by utilizing the data on China’s 18 UAs from 2011 to 2019. Our findings are as follows: (1) The monocentric structure has an inverted “U-shaped” impact on DE, namely, first promotion and then inhibition effects. (2) Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the inverted “U-shaped” relationship between the monocentric structure and DE is not observed in UAs lacking megacities and is insignificant during the early and middle development phases of UAs. However, this non-linear relationship becomes significant in UAs with megacities and UAs in mature and later development stages. (3) More deeply, this study uncovers that innovation serves as a mediating factor in the influence of the monocentric structure on DE. This article not only enriches the existing body of research on UAs and DE but also provides valuable theoretical insights for the development of DE within UAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we find that higher levels of in-migration dilute multiple dimensions of a community's social capital, with some measures of a community's social capital being negatively impacted more than others. Using a spatial model and restricted-access microdata from the US Census Bureau, we employ an instrumental variables strategy to account for the endogeneity of migration. Our results suggest that political activism, overall, is most negatively impacted by in-migration, and that religiosity, trust, and community involvement are impacted more negatively in rural communities compared to non-rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broadband access may have important implications for establishment births in rural areas, which feature thinner markets. Broadband may be especially important for rural nonemployer businesses, particularly those without a storefront, for access to nontraditional market channels. As women are more likely to run these types of small businesses, we further expect that broadband may have important implications for women-led businesses. With an effective instrumental variable approach, we find evidence that broadband access is a key factor leading to a higher establishment birth rate across business size and gender in rural areas. This paper identifies the largest effects on nonemployer, women-led and remote rural establishments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses time varying graphs to evaluate the Brazilian production structures, assessing the relationship across economic sectors overtime given important macroeconomic shocks in the country. We use the annual Brazilian input-output matrices from the World Input–Output Database for the period 1995–2011. Our results show possible positive impacts of macroeconomic policies and higher commodity prices on increased network connectivity between 2002 and 2003, the negative influence of the 2008 crisis resulting in decreased network connectivity, and the intensification of the connectivity of the food, petrochemical and metals, and machinery sectors. These results provide insights on how potential macroeconomic exogenous shocks and policies propagates through the national production structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce a new way of modeling spatial regimes using smooth transitions. We propose an autoregressive spatial lag model where a logistic function captures structural variation in the spatial lag parameter. In the regime-switching spatial lag model with smooth transitions, the effect of the spatial neighbors depends on the transition variable that governs the regime switch. An LM test for detecting nonlinearity is derived, and a simulation study, where the properties of the test are investigated, is conducted. The test shows good power in relatively small samples with moderate deviation from linearity. An empirical application is included, where data on median house prices from the Boston area is used to explore the spatial dependence between census tracts. A smooth shift between regimes governed by the variable property tax rate is found. The smooth spatial lag model performs slightly better than the regular spatial lag model in terms of model fit and capturing spatial dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The productivity gap between East and West Germany is a long ongoing discussion among the public and policy makers. Regional disparities still appear to be substantial. In this paper, we shed light on the role of allocative efficiency as a region’s driver of productivity disparities. We show that over 50 percent of the East-West productivity gap is associated with a less efficient labor allocation in former East Germany. Controlling for the heterogeneity among German federal states, we perform spatial regression on official firm-level data (AFiD), revealing that the regional differences in allocative efficiency are significantly associated with trade openness, competitive intensity, economies of scale and labor mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the determinants of knowledge flows, proxied by patent citations, within 31 Chinese administrative provinces. Relying on patent data from the US Patent and Trademark Office during the period 1995-2019, we are able to identify 27118 patent citation pairs (focusing only on USPTO patents with first inventors residing in China). In order to explain the number of citations from a Province to another, in addition to geographic and technological proximity, we use factor analysis in order to capture the effect of regional research structure. In particular, we measure the private versus public research intensity of each Chinese administrative province. Our econometric results show that, as expected, geographical and technological distance between Provinces are negatively correlated with patent citations. In addition, we find that Chinese administrative provinces that show bigger intensity with regard to public and to private research both receive more patent citations and cite more other patents in other Provinces. This effect is particularly significant when the two regions are specialized in private research, which indicates a strong effect of cognitive proximity. Finally, and at odds with prior research, we find that controlling for social proximity between Provinces does not impact the effect of geographical and technological proximity. These results, if confirmed by further studies, might have significant policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]