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We examine the effect of a place-based policy in China, the Northeastern Revitalization Program. In 2003 the State Council of the People's Republic of China initiated the program in northeastern China by removing an agricultural tax, enhancing the urban social security system, facilitating foreign investment, and restructuring state-owned enterprises in the region. Using the synthetic control method, we find that the program had no significant effect on GDP per capita in all three regions. Liaoning had slightly worse GDP per capita post-treatment, as did Heilongjiang (albeit to a lesser extent). While the multiple synthetic control analysis shows that economic outcomes were worse post-treatment, the impact of this program was heterogeneous across the three regions. We argue the lackluster performance likely comes from the continuing dominance of inefficient state-owned enterprises in the provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognising the intricate link between ports and regional economies, this study investigates the spillover effects of neighbouring ports on regional industrial diversification and economic resilience. Analysing South Korea's 2006–20 export data from port and neighbouring port regions, it uncovers the unique feature of ports as a distinctive knowledge source within their port regions, mainly attributable to the respective logistic and trade systems governing similar product groups. The paper confirms that ports facilitate industrial diversification through spillover effects when it is related with the regional industries. Emphasising ports' role in strengthening economic resilience, it highlights their significance in nurturing emerging industries post-crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional theory holds that local governance is essential in shaping regional economic activity. This study evaluates whether local economic growth targets offset the detrimental effect of nationwide policy uncertainty on local business performance. Regression analyses of data from industrial firms and manually collected data on city economic growth targets in China show that higher local growth targets result in greater corporate investment, conditional on nationwide policy uncertainty, and that the impact is substantial through financial subsidies and allocating credit resources. However, local discretion in economic growth target setting might cause investment misallocation and efficiency loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses debates on the role of agency in shaping the economic future of regions. Scholarship on agency departs from the earlier focus of evolutionary economic geography, which highlighted the role of pre-existing structural conditions. This paper challenges the notion that agency is only found in intentional action and is limited to key actors within a region. It questions exclusive focus on the impact of entrepreneurial leaders, place leaders and government, and identifies agency in the accumulated micro-decisions of multiple decision-makers, using the example of workers affected by the closure of Australia's passenger vehicle industry. In so doing, it underscores the twin roles of collective vision and meaningful implementation in the successful transformation of regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can entrepreneurial activity be stronger and more persistent than the continuity of socialist institutions? The answer to this question is overwhelmingly positive. Using the historical data on entrepreneurship, retail trade and cooperatives in Russian regions, this study shows a strong persistence of entrepreneurship activity in Russia during the period 1926–2018, while we also evidence that the restructuring of the Soviet economy resulted in a structural break in the 1970s. By distinguishing three periods of 1998–99, 2000–07 and 2008–18 since the transition started, we demonstrate that the historical persistence of entrepreneurship is not constant and may change from one period to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research examining the economic effects of urban polycentricity remains inconclusive. We contribute to this debate by developing a longitudinal framework in which changes in polycentricity in Chinese urban regions are linked with changes in total factor productivity. While we find no evidence of urban polycentricity being conducive to economic growth, we observe that the relationship depends on population size and the interactions between cities. We also find that cities borrow size from nearby cities in large urban regions, contributing to regional economic growth. We use our findings to reflect on China's regional economic and urban development strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though most studies find that sports stadiums are not strong drivers of economic activity in metropolitan areas, localized development effects may be sufficient to justify public subsidies for a host municipality if circumstances are favorable. This analysis examines the economic ramifications of an intra-metropolitan area relocation of Atlanta's professional baseball team from a traditional standalone downtown stadium to a new stadium-anchored mixed-use development in suburban Cobb County. Using the synthetic control method, the study employs metro-Atlanta counties to construct a counterfactual outcome for estimating changes in sales tax revenue after the ballpark opened. The findings indicate a net increase in taxable sales in the county; however, the magnitude of the effect is small and not statistically significant. Though net new spending is evident, approximately one-third of the project's sales appear to derive from crowding out other local economic activity. In total, added tax collections fall well short of covering the public subsidies provided by Cobb. The stadium's limited economic impact, despite its favorable location and ancillary mixed-use development, further supports past findings that sports venues are poor investments as economic development projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new interpretation of place brand as a multilevel threshold public good (MTPG) produced by the interaction of narratives from different geographical levels. Using an original dataset of Google trends and tweets from Italian provinces and regions, we test the hypothesis that place branding has a multilevel structure. We further test the MTPG framework applied to place branding, showing that place branding is influenced by different geographical levels which can trigger a spillover in terms of attractiveness if they contribute to crossing a threshold point. The results confirm the presence of a provision point in place branding, showing that the proposed MTPG framework fits the phenomenon. This article contributes to the literature on place branding and brands by providing a new lens through which to interpret the phenomenon, which may be useful for a better understanding and measuring of the interaction of branding strategies operating at different spatial scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creative class has been argued to both hamper and support economic resilience. As such, we propose a new framework on the significance of the creative class for local economic resilience, namely: the creativity and resilience analysis approach (CREA). The study contributes to the literature (1) by evaluating resilience through an index that includes multiple dimensions of creativity-based economic development; and (2) by identifying preliminary findings that link economic resilience with spatial shifts in local labour markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic caused immense labour market turbulences and a large-scale turn towards teleworking. This paper contributes to the understanding of how teleworking shapes regional economic outcomes by focusing on labour market resilience in US cities during the 2020 Covid-19 emergency. It examines employment and labour demand and finds that the share of teleworkable jobs is linked to stronger employment resilience, and enhances labour demand resilience during the onset of the pandemic and in smaller cities. The paper discusses possible mechanisms and policies that can help leverage the promise of teleworking for resilient labour markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advocates adopted the term legacy city for older former industrial central cities to shift policy discussions from their social liabilities to their economic and physical assets. In examining this concept, we place U.S. central cities within a regional context, using cluster-discriminant analysis to distinguish between groups of metropolitan statistical areas, which proxy regional economies. Cluster analysis subsets metropolitan areas according to their position on several theory-driven dimensions. Discriminant analysis then identifies the variables most closely associated with each subset's statistical grouping. The results respond to three questions: (1) Are regions with legacy characteristics homogeneous in population size? (2) Do socioeconomically troubled regions share legacy characteristics? (3) Does the typology of metropolitan regions provide insights into the performance of regional clusters? The findings suggest that private investment and public policy must change regional economic development paths while intentionally including distressed jurisdictions and populations before the futures of central cities that experienced severe population losses can shift to a positive trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Iran-Saudi Arabia conflict is an ongoing struggle for influence in the region that has created uncertainty, affected oil prices and regional economics. This paper uses wavelet analysis to examine the frequency and time-varying co-movement and casual nexus between petroleum prices (OP) and financial liquidness (MS) with and without geopolitical risk (GPR). The aim is to test the validity of the monetary equilibrium model from 1988 to 2019. The model is supported by the findings, as both short and medium-term association is found between OP and MS at high frequencies in the presence of GPR. We find a medium-term association between OP and MS in the absence of GPR. The paper's overall conclusion suggests that GPR affects OP and OP, in turn, impact MS. Diversifying economic activities to minimize oil dependency, which is sensitive to external shocks, is suggested as a mitigation solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does industrial policy currently interact with Regional Economic Communities in Africa? This article examines the tension between Regional Economic Communities and state-level industrial policy in Africa through two main problems: (1) how state industrial policies undermine Regional Economic Communities through a crisis of implementation and (2) how Regional Economic Communities undermine industrial policies through crisis of coordination. In discussing these issues, using indicative examples from the regions, especially the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the East African Community (EAC), the article brings together industrial policy and regional economic integration in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines regional economic convergence in two federal contexts: Brazil and the European Union. Despite many differences, in the last decades these two economies have shown irregular economic growth and been facing economic inequalities, launching public policies to reduce them. We analyse the tendencies of regional convergence within these economies between 2002 and 2019, focusing on σ-convergence, absolute convergence, convergence clubs and the transitional behaviour of club members. The results show that in both cases convergence occurs, but at a slow rhythm, especially in the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconsiders the roles of actors in regional innovation systems in the context of transformative industrial change. Empirically, it draws on evidence from the Värmland region of Sweden, where regional innovation system actors, with partial funding from the Swedish Innovation Agency, are striving to build a bioeconomy upon the traditional forest-related industries. The main findings include that transformative industrial change adds a variety of responsibilities to regional actors, including the provision of change legitimacy, influencing the industry's innovation directionality and achieving social acceptance for change. A combined perspective on sociotechnical transitions and path development in regional innovation systems theoretically informs the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is focused on the emergence of new institutional structures and geographies within the context of complex processes of state rescaling characterized by 'hollowing out' and 'filling in'. It explores the regionalization of transport policy within Wales post-devolution and examines the potential of Haughton et al.'s concepts of 'soft' and 'hard' spaces as useful tools in furthering our understanding of state rescaling. The paper suggests that the case of transport policy in Wales post-devolution provides a useful example of the evolution of 'soft spaces' through processes of hardening and softening, and that 'stickiness' of regional spatial imaginaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. construction industry has been known to employ workers without a college education and provide adequate compensation make ends meet. Today, job quality in the industry has deteriorated to a level where wages are too low, causing workers to rely on U.S. safety net programs. This may be exacerbated by oil price changes, especially in regions where the oil industry is a significant driver of the economy. In this paper, we investigate the effects of oil price dynamics on real wages in the construction industry. A non-linear ARDL and TAR model are used for the empirical exercise which focusses on six top oil producing counties in the U.S. Long-run findings indicate that a 10% increase in oil price increases construction wages by 1.4, 1.2 and 9.3% in Kern, Weld and McKenzie Counties, respectively. Short run estimates indicate that a positive shock to oil prices increases wages in McKenzie County, North Dakota. Results from the TAR model show that the impact of an expansionary monetary policy to increase investment – and accordingly, increase wages – is diluted when oil prices are below the low oil price threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse binding constraints to productivity growth in the UK's regions outside London and the greater South East. These analyses challenge a number of common arguments about the UK's regional economic inequality problem. We find little evidence consistent with the hypotheses (i) that low shares of university graduates remain the primary constraint on growth for the UK's regions; (ii) that there is a generalised issue with access to finance for firms outside the South East; or (iii) that low or falling regional migration rates are to blame for the persistence of the UK's regional economic inequalities. Instead, we find evidence consistent with (i) a specific relative shortage of STEM degrees; (ii) binding transport infrastructure constraints within major non-London conurbations; (iii) a failure of public innovation policy to support clusters beyond the South East, in particular through the regional distribution of public support for Research and Development (R&D); and (iv) missed opportunities for higher internal mobility due to London's overheating housing market. We also find some suggestive evidence consistent with constraints on access to early-stage equity financing for high-growth-potential SMEs in certain regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the importance of interregional trade for building effective regional economic policies, there are very few hard data to illustrate such interdependencies. We propose here a novel research framework to predict interregional trade flows by utilizing freely available Web data and machine learning algorithms. Specifically, we extract hyperlinks between archived Websites in the United Kingdom and we aggregate these data to create an interregional network of hyperlinks between geolocated and commercial Web pages over time. We also use existing interregional trade data to train our models using random forests and then make out-of-sample predictions of interregional trade flows using a rolling-forecasting framework. Our models illustrate great predictive capability with R2 greater than 0.9. We are also able to disaggregate our predictions in terms of industrial sectors, but also at a subregional level, for which trade data are not available. In total, our models provide a proof of concept that the digital traces left behind by physical trade can help us capture such economic activities at a more granular level and, consequently, inform regional policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil infrastructures have historically been developed as highly centralised, extensive, and complicated systems. Electricity, water, buildings, transport networks, and communication systems are each delivered separately. Recent advancements in the development of energy micro-grids have opened the possibility of localised, intensive, and complex, nature-based infrastructure ecosystems. Designed at the scale of a village, such systems would integrate different types of infrastructure. For example, an energy micro-grid can provide electricity to buildings, power electric vehicles and cycle water through a precinct. In turn, the water system can store energy and irrigate a diverse, regenerative food system. Providing housing close to food production reduces transport costs, supply chain losses and packaging. The significant land area required for each village would result in a dispersal of populations, creating networks of villages, each with integrated infrastructure ecosystems. This challenges the orthodoxy in town planning and regional economics that accepts ever-increasing urbanisation. To synthesise ideas developed in different disciplines we adopt the epistemology of consilience. That is, a conclusion can be confirmed when different disciplines arrive at that same position. We show that literature in town planning, regional economics, ecological economics, and public health all support the argument for dispersal reached through civil engineering systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development and application of technologies such as robots and artificial intelligence drive a shift toward non-routinized, creative work. A stylized narrative is that a few regions dominate the making of these technologies and enjoy a virtuous cycle of increasing employment, innovativeness, and in-migration of the creative class. Regions merely applying these technologies may get into a vicious cycle of increasing unemployment, out-migration, and decreasing innovativeness. Following the normative governance turn in regional political economics, this theoretical policy paper pitches a framework of three complementary institutions to direct the technology-driven structural change for regional catching-up. Firstly, a system for innovation and entrepreneurial activity creates jobs by supporting exploitation of complementarities of application, co-development activities, and product innovation within mature and emerging sectors. Secondly, education provides creative and entrepreneurial skills to exploit technological opportunities and upskills workers for emerging sectors. Thirdly, labour market and social security institutions are to allow rationalization in mature sectors, incentivize hiring and learning on the job, as well as encourage innovative ventures, notably in emerging sectors. Challenges of implementation of the framework due to path-dependence, co-evolution, and multi-scalarity as well as applicability in different varieties of capitalism are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary economic geography has sought to understand the development of regional industrial pathways but tended to neglect both the multiscalarity of economic development and the role of institutional change. The concept of coevolution seeks to bridge this gap but is still too vague for empirical application. Understanding the interactions between path development and institutional change in regional economies and on higher spatial scales requires retheorizing coevolution along the dimensions of institutional–industrial coevolution, path multiplicity and multiscalarity. The article proposes such a retheorized concept of coevolution by integrating concepts of path development, institutions, institutional change, institutional entrepreneurship, institutional work and nestedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relatedness is a popular concept for regional branching within Smart Specialisation. However, this proximity-network approach misses its regional perspective, making difficult its operationalization in regional policies. This paper advances the regional perspective of relatedness for improving prioritization in Smart Specialisation by combining the concepts of technological relatedness and sectoral specialization. Using a four-stage methodology, we reveal potential Smart Specialisation priorities for a set of 16 European regions considering both cognitive links arising through technological relatedness and their regional structures. The proposed methodology reduces the stress of regional stakeholders participating in entrepreneurial discovery processes by providing a narrower set of priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are debates on whether the implementation of the Belt and Road (BR) initiative could significantly increase CO2 emissions in participating countries. Nevertheless, the policy effect of the BR initiative on both consumption- and production-based CO2 emissions has not been fully explored. In this study, we quantified the consumption- and production-based CO2 emissions in BR countries with a multiregional input–output model. Then, a difference-in-differences (DID) model was used to identify the CO2 emissions caused by the BR initiative. Results showed that the production-based CO2 emissions (20.77 Gt) were 11 percent higher than the consumption-based CO2 emissions (18.71 Gt) in BR countries. The BR initiative had a significant, positive effect on per-capita consumption-based CO2 emissions (p value < 0.1), with an average increase of 0.51 t/cap/year, but had no significant effect on per-capita production-based CO2 emissions (p value > 0.1). These results imply that the BR initiative promoted regional consumption to achieve common prosperity and boosted green transformation of regional economy. Moreover, non-BR countries that have consumed CO2-embedded products should take responsibility for the CO2 emitted in BR countries. Participants should give priority to strengthening the cooperation based on their country's infrastructure conditions rather than the proximity to China. These findings clarify the policy effect of the BR initiative and distinguish the CO2 emission responsibility from both consumption- and production-based perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An admirer of John Maynard Keynes and an advocate of a historically grounded economic theory, the French economist, Bernard Maris, investigated the possible emergence of alternative monetary, productive, and distributive institutional arrangements for a more just society. Based on a dialogue between institutional economics and Bernard Maris, the present paper aims at proposing general guidelines for the construction of a plan for subnational development towards a more equitable and inclusive society on the regional, individual, and geo-economic levels. With a special focus on the region of Occitanie—Maris's native region, located in the Southwest of France—the study borrows Karl Polanyi's lens, in his The Great Transformation, to envision a possible reduction of dependency in each one of those three levels through the process of decommodification of money, labor, and land, respectively. Because of its ability to take into consideration specificities (being them departmental, territorial, and/or social), institutional economic theory seems adequate to support subnational development, especially in a region with great diversity and a high level of socio-economic and geographic disparity like Occitanie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of universities in regional development has grown significantly over the past two decades. One strand of analysis has been that of the university in regional innovation systems (RIS). However, the contribution of university students has largely been neglected. This special issue contributes to the RIS literature by unpacking the RIS concept through exploring this specific aspect of university engagement in regional economies. The nine papers collectively offer an understanding of the effects of student activity upon the knowledge, skill and entrepreneurial bases of regions. The papers provide evidence and analysis from Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the heterogeneous effect of student spending in UK NUTS-2 regions. Impact analyses of the more than £45 billion students spend each year have so far been agnostic of the regional absorptive capacity to benefit from this expenditure. Building a multi-regional input–output model for the UK and combining it with data on student expenditure, domicile and level of study, the paper finds significant regional heterogeneity in gross value added and employment multipliers as well as in interregional spillovers. The analysis shows how important student expenditure is for regional economies and the symbiotic relationship between student spending and regional industrial structures that produce varying impact outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study intergenerational social mobility in Mexico at the subnational level to determine whether poorer regions have similar rates of social mobility as richer ones. We approximate socioeconomic status with an index that captures the variability across households in durable goods, services and education of household heads for both adult children and their parents. The estimated indicators suggest a clear north–south gradient in social mobility: the children of poor parents in the northern regions experience greater upward mobility than in the central and southern regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two competing paradigms to modelling the impacts of regional economic shocks have arisen: 'disequilibrium' models, which predict that regional economies eventually fully recover, and 'no-equilibrium' models, which predict economic shocks have a permanent effect. To address this controversy, we adapt contemporary model-averaging methods to optimally combine both paradigms and thereby permit intermediate cases in which recoveries can be partial. Applying our method to a set of labour market models that span the disequilibrium and no-equilibrium paradigms, we find that regional recoveries are incomplete, implying that downturns have long-lasting effects on regional unemployment rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper pilots an approach for using trademark data to study regional diversification. Bridging the respective literatures, we develop a regional trademarking-intensity measure that can shed new light on how different regions diversify while also accounting for changing industrial structures and income levels (regional gross domestic product). The approach reveals that density has a moderate effect on trademarking intensity and confirms the strong relationship between new firm formation and regional diversification. These effects are found to vary by sector and to be sensitive to industry-level employment and turnover. Lastly, the analysis indicates that regional diversification differs sharply between urban and peripheral regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using city-level data from China for the period 2003–15, this paper studies how the Internet affects economic disparities between cities through its heterogeneous impact on the economic growth of cities with different penetration rates and population sizes. The results show that the Internet widens the economic disparities between cities with low Internet penetration rates and cities with high Internet penetration rates, and even if the penetration gap between cities is bridged in the future, the Internet will still widen the economic gap between large and small cities due to the reinforcing effect of city size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'financialization of real estate' (FoRE) refers to the method of connecting financial markets with the geographical location of real estate assets. Therefore, the unevenness of regional development is closely tied to FoRE. In Japan, FoRE's initial focus was Tokyo; however, the interest has recently spread to the periphery. This shift occurred owing to changes in investment actors and their strategies, which also changed the impact of the penetration of FoRE on regional economies. This article will elucidate the factors that constitute the FoRE core–periphery structure, focusing on regional real estate market characteristics and investment actors' attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper measures regional economic and spatial effects on locations of small and large enterprises, by using binary logit models. The econometric results confirm that the location of small firm depends on the regional labour force availability and the population growth of its neighbouring regions. In addition, the large enterprise tends to agglomerate into regions to be less-regulated or to be near to high-speed railroad stations. Finally, industrial clusters of the small and large enterprises would be likely to be geographically close each other in order to share intermediate inputs as a co-agglomeration pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Place leadership (PL) influences the capability of places hit by disruptive challenges to react and reroute to new paths of development. Recent contributions consider the positive role of PL, while negative aspects are still under-investigated. This paper proposes a conceptual framework that, focusing on local productive systems (LPSs), explores PL's dark side. Forms of PL accompanying LPSs show different degrees of openness and strength that interact with the same LPS structural features. Enclosed forms of PL, aiming to preserve restricted and well-established interests, might intentionally resist attempts of LPS rerouting if undermining such interests, albeit beneficial to the system overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial diversification depends on spillovers from related industries and nearby regions, yet their interaction remains largely unclear. We study economic diversification in China during the period 1990–2015 and present supportive evidence on both spillover channels. We add to the literature by showing that these two channels behave as substitutes when explaining new entries and exits, and by using acceleration campaigns of high-speed rail to address some endogeneity concerns with regional spillovers. Our findings confirm the role of relatedness and geographical distance in the diffusion of economic capabilities and support the idea that improvements in transportation can facilitate the diffusion of productive capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of market access on human capital accumulation in Turkey. Using individual-level data, the analysis explores the background of human capital accumulation, combining market accessibility, wages and human capital development. Upon the treatment of wages as an endogenous covariate of interest and overtime work as an exogenous source of variation, we find evidence that the impact of market access on human capital development vanishes in ways not predicted by the augmented New Economic Geography set-up for human capital accumulation. Findings confirm that economic policies may be effective in reducing regional variation in human capital endowments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a novel database of regional trade flows between 267 European regions for 2013, this paper examines how government quality affects trade between European Union (EU) regions. The results of a structural gravity cross-sectional analysis of trade show that trade across EU regions is highly influenced by differences in regional government quality. This influence varies by both sector of economic activity and the level of economic development of the region. The results indicate that if the less developed regions of the EU want to engage in greater interregional trade, improving their institutional quality is a must. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience is system specific rather than shock specific. This study proposes a new measure of engineering resilience based on the theories of simple harmonic motion and regime switching, and it examines the determinants of resilience among China's regional economies to the 2008 subprime crisis. Enhancing industrial diversity, human capital stock, trade openness and financial liberalization can improve economic resilience. Pre-crisis economic performance had a negative effect on regional economic resilience in China. More efforts are needed to enhance regional economic resilience in China by fostering entrepreneurship. The results provide information for policies to address external shocks and promote sustainable regional economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By combining arguments from regional economics and family business research, the aim of this article is to test the relationships among local export spillovers, management characteristics, and export propensity on a large sample of Spanish manufacturing firms over the 2003–2015 period. We find that family-managed firms, compared to their non-family counterparts, benefit more from being located in regions with a high density of exporters. Because of their firm-specific social capital and strong embeddedness in local networks, family-managed firms are better positioned to leverage the spatially bounded flow of knowledge and information in these regions, resulting in a higher likelihood to export than non-family firms. Additionally, our results show that the knowledge spillover effect is stronger for small and low-tech family firms' export propensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who drives regional economic development in entrepreneurial ecosystems of different types? Using longitudinal data on 267 NUTS-3 European regions during the period 2008–16, we apply the entrepreneurial ecosystem theoretical framework to study how entrepreneurial ecosystem type moderates the relationship between a variety of entrepreneurship and regional economic development. It is found that regional economic development proxied by gross value added per resident responds differently to solo self-employment, job creators and new-firm birth rates as well as changes in a share of productive high-growth entrepreneurship across different entrepreneurial ecosystems. The findings have implications for regional and national policy-makers and scholars who study the geography of entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impacts of airport activities on regional economies using annual data on all regions and 22 airports in New Zealand from 2001 to 2016. In addition to fixed effects estimation, the system generalized method of moments approach and the dynamic common correlated effects estimator are used to account for cross-sectional dependence, cross-regional heterogeneity and feedback effects. The study shows clear and consistent evidence that aviation activities positively affect regional economies, and that it is beneficial for policy-makers and airport owners in a region to promote aviation activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of major aspects of economic structure and access to resources (value added, consumption, diversity, sectoral shares, degree of urbanization, population with high-end skills and access to financial resources) for Indian regions (all states and union territories across the country with larger states divided into smaller and more comparable subregional units of NSS regions) between 2004–05 and 2011–12 identifies the factors that differentiate regions and shows that differences in these factors have increased over time. A step-wise discriminant analysis indicates that regional output and consumption were the key distinguishing factors, along with the sectoral composition of the regional economy. Clear evidence was found of a move towards greater diversity in the local economy, the emergence of construction and other service sectors with significant shares, and increased but more unequal access to finance and skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the simultaneous impact of subnational tax autonomy and vertical transfers on regional disparities of gross domestic product (GDP) per head in a sample of 30 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries over the period 1995–2011. Autonomously raised tax revenue as well as vertical transfers are shown to be potential drivers of regional convergence, although the negative marginal impact of transfers on disparities decreases and eventually turns positive as subnational governments are more transfer dependent. The results indicate that subnational tax autonomy should be sufficiently broad to allow less developed regions to expand their own revenue base and to catch up with their more developed counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional convergence stands out in the adjustment of the Portuguese economy that followed the international financial crisis. This outcome contrasts with increasing regional inequality in other European countries. We investigate the role of regional indebtedness, openness to trade and local fiscal autonomy in regions' economic performance. Using a novel database, we contribute to a better understanding of the linkages between macroeconomic imbalances and regional economic dynamics. Our estimates suggest that regions' indebtedness had a negative impact on economic growth. On the other hand, openness to trade and fiscal decentralization had a positive impact on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in information and communication technology (ICT) clusters has long been sustained by the power of emerging technologies to reinvent regional or local economies. Prior research has identified the structural conditions under which clusters form, decline or evolve, but much less is known about the agents responsible for cluster change. This paper examines the evolution of the Toronto ICT cluster from a location for foreign multinational firms in hardware and telecommunications into a more dynamic ecosystem for service-based domestic start-ups and emerging scale-ups. It contributes to the literature on clusters by showing how entrepreneurs have driven cluster evolution in Toronto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why and how do regional politics develop outside the context of a coherent regional economy? Alongside the familiar logic of city-regional growth coalitions, we introduce a less familiar logic of regional imaginaries actively constructing strategies in novel scalar configurations. We explore this second logic of regionalism in the case of the Toronto–Waterloo 'Innovation Corridor'. We highlight three important forces: the productive ambiguity of the region as a spatial and strategic concept; the centrality of regionalism entrepreneurs in constructing a political agenda; and the importance of extrospective policy-making for establishing a rationale for collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land-use planning influences economic performance as it can intervene with location-specific and heterogeneous production externalities. This paper examines the impacts of heterogeneous externalities on local employment growth using a panel model framework with block-level land-use data inventory for Chicago. Cross-industry spillovers provide positive impacts on growth, but the mechanisms behind them differ across sectors and spatial scales. Improved understanding of heterogeneity in agglomeration economies can better support plan-making and urban economic performance. The results show significant and positive influence of cross-industry spillovers, a missing consideration in existing planning processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper speculates on what role MaaS may have post Covid-19 and especially to rethink public transport in its widest sense. I Scenario 1: i Travel will return to the pre-Covid-19 normal within a few months, with public transport, ride share and private car use showing very similar levels of use, crowding and congestion as before. Under scenario 1, we might expect MaaS in Australia, and more generally any Covid-19 affected economy, to reboot pretty much along the same lines as pre-Covid-19. [Extracted from the article]

Cyclical synchronization of home prices has important implications for monetary (and other) policies. Regional house price divergence, even over a business cycle, can inhibit labour mobility and prevent workers from moving to where they could add most to their own wages and overall growth. We study house price co-movement across the different UK regions with a method, that, unlike previously employed techniques, allows for time-varying estimates. We find first, that the UK exhibits more home price divergence compared to previously reported results for the US. Second, regions near London exhibit the most co-movement, and those further from London the most divergence. Third, London itself is in the 'middle of the pack' in terms of synchronization compared to other regions. This may reflect London's status as a 'global city' and being the destination for housing demand from sources abroad. Lastly, segmentation has clearly been increasing, rather than decreasing in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]