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This article presents a comment from R. R. MacKay on the evaluation made by Barry Moore and John Rhodes on the effects of regional economic policy (REP) on manufacturing employment in Great Britain from 1963 to 1971. In their study, Moore and Rhodes maintain that regional policy added to Development Area manufacturing employment. They show that there was a clear improvement from 1963, but both the claim that the net annual increase in employment, such as the gap between actual and expected employment, accelerated after 1967 and their assessment of the effect of the REP are questionable. Without the REP, the gap between actual and expected employment might have been smaller in 1971 than it was in 1967. Although Moore and Rhodes refer to the importance of the national economic situation, they do not compare the labor markets of the pre- and post-REP periods. Moore and Rhodes acknowledge that their provisional estimates are substantially below official expectations, but nevertheless claim that the total abolition of the REP could have serious adverse consequences for the Development Areas. They tend to overstate the effect of regional economic and while gifts are usually gratefully accepted it is possible that the introduction of the wage subsidy has diverted attention and emphasis from more promising forms of intervention.

The article reports that regional development policy has become an essential component of full employment and welfare policy in Great Britain. The established policy contributed to the spread of opportunities and facilities between regions. Moreover, the approaching completion of the traditional industries and inflation problems points to the need for a clearer investigation on regional issues.

The article discusses the repercussions of the administrative innovations of the West Midlands Regional Economic Planning Council in Great Britain. In order to illustrate the moving phenomena on the evolution of the membership of the economic planning councils in the West Midlands, there are three base line used for purposes of comparison which includes the initial membership planning council in 1995, the membership in 1968 after the end of the member's first three-year contract and lastly the membership in July 1991. The West Midlands Planning Council, in its evidence to the Commission on the Constitution and in its Economic Appraisal has called for this more radical change. It may well be that the developments beginning to spread.

Deals with the role of Regional Economic Planning Councils and Boards in the formation of economic policies in Great Britain. Stage in the development of regional administration; History of regionalism in the country.

REGIONAL economics is a field of study which has meant different things to different people. To some it has meant primarily the study of the economy and the economic problems of a particular region--generally one that is part of a wider area within which free trade prevails, and within which movements of labour and capital are not subject to control. To others it has meant the wider study of the relative economic performances and the economic interactions of a number of such regions. Studies of both these kinds have been undertaken in many countries, with the United States very decidedly in the lead so far as the volume and the variety of the work are concerned, and to survey the whole literature of the subject impartially would be a large task, the fruits of which could hardly be usefully compressed into article length. The aim of the present survey, therefore, is to consider primarily the work relating to regional economic problems and their analysis in the United Kingdom, with such references to studies of other countries as will serve to set British problems in perspective and to suggest approaches that might in future be applied to investigation of them. Regional economic studies have thus consisted of price-meal attempts to cope with particular problems rather than of extensions of the oldest branch of spatial economics--international economics --to the regional field. And, in the United Kingdom especially, the problems thus coped with have been concrete and applied rather than abstract and theoretical. Regional economics starts from the diagnosis of regional problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the regional significance of Industrial and Commercial Finance Corp. (ICFC). The public pressures which gave rise to ICFC came both from the city and from the regions, in a common desire to prevent a recurrence of mass unemployment, which had extended with unbearable severity over Northern and Western Britain, through the establishment of a new kind of financial institution. In its formative discussions the regional pressures from the highest unemployment areas were the stronger, in the event, its whole life has been spent in an age of inflation and the bulk of its finances has flowed into the regions of full or overfull employment. Nevertheless, these dual initiating forces help to explain the retention by the Corporation of its two-fold functions, not only as a catalyst of growth for small and medium firms, but also as an agency conscious of the part it can play in helping to solve the regional problem. It may well be that the predominance of its primary role obscures, or perhaps even inhibits, its contribution to the solution of regional difficulties.

This article presents a reply from Barry Moore and John Rhodes to comment from R. R. MacKay on their evaluation on the effects of regional economic policy (REP) on manufacturing employment in Great Britain from 1963 to 1971. Moore and Rhodes are pleased to be in agreement with MacKay when he says that the observed total regional policy effect between 1963 and 1971 was almost 150,000 manufacturing jobs and that this observed employment gain can be divided equally between the two periods 1967 to 1971 and 1963 to 1967. The authors also agree that the identification of an REP effect requires that account must be taken of the pressure of demand and the time lags associated with the effects of non-REP regional policy instruments. MacKay seeks to avoid the problem of assessing time lags, and to allow for changing activity levels, by adopting an approach altogether different from the authors based on an analysis of the Development Area share of employment expected from industrial development certificate approvals and the national male unemployment rate. The results of this continued work seem to be consistent with the range for the REP effect given in the article, even when the analysis is extended to 1971. Further confirmation that the REP has had a significant effect on employment in Development Areas has been provided by evidence obtained from our industrial enquiry covering 350 firms.