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The main goal of this paper is to empirically examine the effects of related and unrelated variety on per employee income in Polish NUTS 2 regions, and the resulting income inequality. The study is based on regional panel data for the 2003–2018 period using the GMM estimator system. The positive effect of related variety on per employee income and the negative effect of unrelated variety on per employee income are reported. Our simulation results show that regional income inequality could be reduced by promoting related variety in eastern regions of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel approach to capture 'buzz', the vibrancy and knowledge exchange propensity of localised informal communication flows. Building on a conceptual framework based on relational economic geography, we argue the content of buzz may allow to probe into the character of places and investigate what is 'in the air' within regional entrepreneurial milieux. In particular, we analyse big data to listen for the presence of buzz about innovation – defined by discursive practices that reflect an innovative atmosphere – and explore how this may influence regional firm creation. Using information from 180 million geolocated Tweets comprising almost two billion words across NUTS3 regions in the UK for the year 2014, our results offer novel evidence, robust to different model specifications, that regions characterised by a relatively higher intensity of discussion and vibrancy around topics related to innovation may provide a more effective set of informal resources for sharing and recombination of ideas, defining regional capabilities to support and facilitate entrepreneurial processes. The findings contribute to the literature on the intangible dimensions in the geography of innovation and offer new insights on the potential of natural language processing for economic geography research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]