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Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Community wealth building provides an important counterpoint to the orthodoxy of place based economic policy in the UK. It puts forward a framework for economic change which shows that local areas can intervene effectively to build wealth from within so that they are less reliant upon extractive forms of economic development. Instead, wealth building within a community is about recognising the wealth that already exists in an area and intervening to encourage that wealth to flow more readily, particularly from capital to labour. This article explores the background to the development of community wealth building in the UK and its connection with the debate on the everyday economy. It finds that there is a close alignment between the objectives of building wealth and the everyday economy, particularly in areas which not only feel 'left behind', but arguably, who have been kept behind by a policy regime which has actively dismantled their sense of place, agency and identity, and in turn, devalued the role and purpose of the businesses and economy that already exists, in favour of elusive 'growth' and/or 'pioneer' sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Levelling up and the everyday economy are two crucial concepts for understanding the direction of policy making in the UK, but the relationship between them has not yet been fully explored. Moreover, the UK's industrial and regional policies are woefully underdeveloped. This article suggests how levelling up and the everyday economy concepts could contribute to Labour's emerging industrial and regional policies. It argues that Labour is right to pursue an economic growth agenda, but must make growth work for communities and workers, and the everyday economy can help. The everyday economy can contribute to, and benefit from, local productivity growth, but regions still need companies that export or are at the technological frontier to raise demand, productivity and pay. Labour should work with the government's Levelling Up White Paper, but this was overly focussed on cities and knowledge intensive business services: there is an economic case for including towns and manufacturing too, and they should prioritise connecting places and sectors, building on the diverse strengths which different places can offer, and setting a long‐term direction of travel. Over time, Labour should try to ensure that cities, towns and smaller communities are better connected, better coordinated and more specialised within larger regions. Labour should, therefore, set out an industrial and regional strategy; work up an economic development toolkit; and devolve economic powers to Mayoral Combined Authorities and councils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between interest rates, inflation and economic growth using a long dataset for the UK. The approach adopted enables us to identify structural breaks in the dynamic system (vector autoregression (VAR)). We find interest rates respond much more strongly to growth and inflation over recent decades, and forecast error variance decomposition analysis indicates there is increasing interconnectedness between the variables in recent years. Economic policymakers need to carefully monitor the linkages between these variables and be prepared to adjust their monetary policy tools when faced with structural changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Labour party cannot ignore its newly acquired liberal voters if it is to win the next election [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit is currently making the economic climate uncertain. It will have an impact on the economic health of the UK economy and its products may suffer as consequence. It presents conditions for engendering both the positive and negative features of a falling currency. Associated with Brexit is the possibility of negative customer brand perceptions, a result of the UK country of origin effect. This raises the issue of considering alternative strategic routes to growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: As the formal process of Brexit has already started, there is much uncertainty about Brexit's impacts on Britain's social, political and economic future. This paper examines the economic impact. After briefly discussing some significant EU treaties that serve as the background materials, it presents the key arguments advocated by the leave and remain camps. The economic impact depends critically on the negotiation outcomes. Aside from the debate on the divorce costs, there are numerous issues that must be negotiated, such as immigration, trade in goods, services, agriculture, fisheries and financial regulations. We discuss various scenarios of possible new trade regimes, resulting in different impacts on the UK economy. With each side having its bargaining chips to play, the trade‐offs between “give and take” in the negotiation game are analysed. Considering various strategic options, this paper urges rationality and cooperation, especially weighing both sides’ entwined economic interests, in addition to their mutual security, defence, environmental and world concerns. The potential gains and losses in the event where the UK contemplates new trade arrangements with the non‐EU countries are analysed in the Appendix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the UK productivity puzzle using new data on outputs and inputs and clarifying the role of output mismeasurement, input growth and industry effects. Our data indicate an implied labour productivity gap of 13 percentage points in 2011 relative to the productivity level on pre‐recession trends. We find that: (a) the labour productivity puzzle is a TFP puzzle, since it is not explained by the contributions of labour or capital services; (b) the reallocation of labour between industries deepens rather than explains the puzzle (i.e. there has been a reallocation of hours away from low‐productivity industries and toward high productivity industries); (c) capitalization of R&D does not explain the productivity puzzle; (d) assuming increased scrapping rates since the recession, a 25% (50%) increase in depreciation rates post‐2009 can potentially explain 15% (31%) of the productivity puzzle; (e) industry data show that 35% of the TFP puzzle can be explained by weak TFP growth in the oil & gas and finance sectors; and (f) cyclical effects via factor utilization could potentially explain 17% of the productivity puzzle. Continued weakness in finance would suggest a future lowering of TFP growth to around 0.8% p.a. from a baseline of 0.9% p.a. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the scenario in Great Britain where downfall in labour productivity hampered economic development, which it depicts has happened due to developments in the cost of capital. Topics discussed include implications of the rising cost of capital, historical analysis of the matter with regard to the economy of Great Britain and policy implications.

Abstract: Clark's claims about the scale of English agricultural output from the 1200s to the 1860s flout historical and geographical reality. His income‐based estimates start with the daily real wages of adult males and assume that days worked per year were constant. Those advanced in British economic growth make no such assumption and instead are built up from the output side. They correlate better with population trends and are consistent with an economy slowly growing and becoming richer. Clark's denial that such growth occurred, his assertion that substantially more land must have been under arable cultivation, his belief that conditions of full employment invariably prevailed in the countryside at harvest time, his concern that the wage bill would have exceeded the value of output in British economic growth, his refusal to consider the possibility that the working year was of variable length, and his assertion that output per acre must have been equalized across arable and pasture are all shown to be figments of his ‘Malthus delusion’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores satisfaction with the political domain of local government performance, using survey data from a contemporary British city as the empirical context. It employs a factor-augmented ordered logit analysis of data emerging from a representative city-wide series of over 1,000 household interviews. Affective reactions to local economic performance and policy effectiveness are constructed in the spirit of the approach used in earlier work by social scientists. The key significant influences that raise or depress satisfaction at this geographical level are presented. Affective reactions to past policy and the economy are both shown to be statistically significant, but with reactions to the economy being negative while those for other policy reactions seemingly positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses an empirical approach to test the specific causal relationship between debt and growth in the UK, in the context of the debate surrounding the use of a policy known as austerity measures. This time series perspective makes use of more recent Granger causality and cointegration tests that allow for non-stationarity in macroeconomic time series data in the presence of structural breaks. Controlling for exogenous shocks associated with the period around the financial crisis, we find no evidence of a causal relationship between economic growth and public debt for the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the UK, City Deals, essentially bespoke packages of funding and decision-making negotiated between national government and local authorities, are increasingly taking centre stage in promoting economic growth. Each City Deal is seen to reflect the needs of individual cities and their surrounding regions, and each has its own distinctive funding and development agenda. Although the City Deal model has been broadly welcomed by national and local political leaders, concerns have been more widely expressed about its operation and effectiveness. This paper outlines the development and characteristics of the City Deals programme and offers a reflective commentary on a number of issues surrounding the programme, namely, accountability and evaluation, the relationship between the local and national states, the role of planning, and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we explore the implications of Brexit for the UK and the EU's development policies and strategic directions, focusing on the former. While it is likely that the operational process of disentangling the UK from the various development institutions of the EU will be relatively straightforward, the choices that lie ahead about whether and how to cooperate thereafter are more complex. Aid and development policy touches on a wide range of interests-security, trade, climate change, migration, gender rights, and so on. We argue that Brexit will accelerate existing trends within UK development policy, notably towards the growing priority of private sector-led economic growth strategies and blended finance tools. There are strong signals that UK aid will be cut, as successive secretaries of state appear unable to persuade a substantial section of the public and media that UK aid and development policy serves UK interests in a variety of ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the periodical is presented providing articles related to challenges to firms and economy development of Great Britain following the Brexit decision.

A dynamic of global economic development means that many countries are experiencing uneven development and their citizens are increasingly split between those who can access high-skill jobs and those who cannot. As a result some citizens are living in cosmopolitan areas of growth and others in backwater areas of decline. There are emerging out of these processes two versions of England. In cosmopolitan areas we find an England that is global in outlook, liberal and more plural in its sense of identity. In provincial backwaters we find an England that is inward-looking, relatively illiberal, negative about the EU and immigration, nostalgic and more English in its identity. This bifurcation of England is already having political effects, reflected in the outcome of the 2015 general election. It will further reconfigure politics over the next two decades, creating diverse political citizens and a complex array of challenges and dilemmas for governments, political parties, campaigners and political organisers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of several articles for the period 400-1100 AD is presented including one by Naismith on currency, link social and economic developments among the English, one by Lane on urban life at Wroxeter into the 6th and 7th centuries, and one by Lavelle on the policy of King Eadwig.

The Conservative party's ability to embrace popular concerns around value, place and equality has enabled it to resurrect the old pre-crisis growth model, says Craig Berry, in a move which none of the post-crisis narratives offered by the Labour party has yet been able to disrupt or overturn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Great Britain, a basic inter-urban network of motorways was completed in a very short period between the end of 1959 and 1972. We calculate that this substantial investment had the potential to reduce most inter-urban journey times by about one third. In spite of this, a recent OECD study suggested that the investment had no discernible positive impact on the trend rate of economic growth. We attribute this outcome to a serious misalignment of the early investments with the then predominant flows of industrial and commercial traffics and a significant, and probably endogenous, increase in real wages in a road transport industry in which labour productivity was slow to improve. We conclude with a number of policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid expansion of the labour supply and robust business investment means that potential output is likely to have grown strongly last year. Therefore, based upon the latest data for GDP, we estimate that the output gap only narrowed very slightly in 2014, ending the year at 4% of potential output., The prospects for potential output growth are favourable, with the labour supply set to be boosted by sustained strength in inward migration and the staged increase in the State Pension Age, and robust growth in business investment continuing to deepen the capital stock., This will provide the conditions for relatively strong growth and low inflation over the medium term, with GDP growth expected to average 2.6% a year from 2015-19. This is some way below the average of the decade prior to the financial crisis, but it would represent a clear step up on the average growth rate achieved between 2007-14., Our estimate of the output gap is much larger than that of the OBR. This suggests that the UK's structural deficit is smaller and that the degree to which fiscal policy needs to be tightened may not be as great as the OBR estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article places a new account of the English state's changing framework for economic regulation alongside what economic historians have demonstrated about the phasing and arenas of economic growth between 1660 and 1714. It places studies of parliamentary legislation into a broader examination of the state's means of regulation (which included the privy council and parliament) and sets this account of regulatory actions against a new account of the changing ways in which petitions approached the state as a regulatory body and how the state responded to those approaches. It also offers a more textured account of the changing styles of economic regulation in this period and of the important (though neglected) role played by commercial interests groups. It argues that the executive colluded with these interests during the Restoration period to use the state to increase the scale of England's overseas trade. With the rising importance of parliament after 1689 regulatory initiative diffused to either local interests which focused on infrastructure projects or trading interests bent on defeating regulating statutes in ways that would lead to deregulation as other constitutional means of regulation (especially the privy council) retreated from view. The state continued to regulate to protect manufacturing (which also provided customs revenue) and to support the monopoly of the East India Company (which provided money and materiel for the wars against Louis XIV). As such the article offers a broader and more agile means to understand the economic connotations of constitutional change in this critical period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the development of tax policy in the UK over the last decade or so and assesses policy change against a low bar-consistency and coherence. While this government has followed some consistent policies-notably, in some aspects of corporation tax and in increasing the income tax personal allowance-there are few signs of a wider coherent strategy. The same has been true of other recent governments. Many aspects of the system have become more complex. There have been numerous policy reversals. And few of those aspects of the system in most need of reform have been tackled. The need for reform, and a clear strategy for reform, remain as pressing as ever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late Victorian Britain was very important in the development of British dominance in light consumer goods industries, such as fermented liquors and spirits; detergents and perfumery; bicycles and other carriages; paper, stationery, and bookbinding; and games of all kinds and sports goods. Firms developed technology-based innovations and marketing-based innovations, creating abnormal peaks of trademark registrations in certain industries. This article investigates those peaks and shows that factors usually pointed out as explaining British economic decline in heavy industries did not impact on the development of light consumer goods industries, and on the contrary encouraged their fast growth during this period. Trademark registrations are shown to provide new insights into the debate on British relative decline, when combined with other industry and firm-level data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses newspaper advertisements to chart the changes in speeds and fares of stage coaches, identifying the main periods of increasing speeds among London coaches as the 1760s-80s and 1810s-20s, separated by a period when speeds declined. It then measures productivity growth. Fares of London coaches in 1835-6 were about 27 per cent of what they would have been but for improvements in horses, vehicles, and roads from 1750, and the two main periods of productivity growth correspond to those of rising speeds. Speeds and productivity of regional coaches increased more smoothly. The rising productivity firmly identifies road transport as one of the modernizing sectors of the economy. New figures are put forward for the growing number of London and regional coaches, indicating rapid growth in passenger miles. While turnpike trusts had little impact before the 1750s, their increasing effectiveness, together with the use of steel springs and improved horses, was crucial to the rising productivity of the 1760s-80s, and even more so to that of the 1810s-20s. The cross roads were apparently poorer than London roads in the late eighteenth century, but thereafter the gap narrowed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the important role played by higher education in broader skills and economic development policies in England and Scotland. It places the often divergent policy experiments and structural developments in these two countries' higher education systems within an international policy context and explains why England and Scotland are often tackling common problems and challenges in different ways. Scotland's retention of a centralised funding system for higher education, its enthusiasm for a closer integration of higher education with other forms of skills creation and its emphasis on skills utilisation are all leading to greater divergence from England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with recent debates which assert that community participation and empowerment are place-contingent. The particular nature of localities has regularly been taken to account for success or failure in processes of participation and regeneration. In contrast, this article exposes the failings based in the nature of the process of regeneration in the complex intersection of national agendas of community participation, regional objectives of economic growth and local aspirations of social cohesion and improved amenities. These agendas meet in the seemingly mutual pursuit of the 'active community'. They become manifest in the micro-politics of negotiating and enacting different constructions of community by the different actors 'empowered' in the regeneration process: regional development agencies, local government and local civil society. The article is based on ethnographic research in the Kent coalfield. The coalfields as distinct places have commanded a lasting place in the academic and policy literature: romanticized as the epitome of 'communityness' but demonized as the site of problem groups. This otherness has outlasted the industry the communities were built on. The analysis here shows that the social organization of regeneration in an arguably 'different' place is less driven by local specificities than by a failure to make visible conflicting constructions of community; therefore both the pathologizing of disadvantaged social groups and calls for more 'community' in policy delivery rather than policy reform are called into question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing threat of climate change has created a pressing need for cities to lower their carbon footprints. Urban laboratories are emerging in numerous cities around the world as a strategy for local governments to partner with public and private property owners to reduce carbon emissions, while simultaneously stimulating economic growth. In this article, we use insights from laboratory studies to analyse the notion of urban laboratories as they relate to experimental governance, the carbonization agenda and the transition to low-carbon economies. We present a case study of the Oxford Road corridor in Manchester in the UK that is emerging as a low-carbon urban laboratory, with important policy implications for the city's future. The corridor is a bounded space where a public-private partnership comprised of the City Council, two universities and other large property owners is redeveloping the physical infrastructure and installing monitoring equipment to create a recursive feedback loop intended to facilitate adaptive learning. This low-carbon urban laboratory represents a classic sustainable development formula for coupling environmental protection with economic growth, using innovation and partnership as principal drivers. However, it also has significant implications in reworking the interplay of knowledge production and local governance, while reinforcing spatial differentiation and uneven participation in urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study business cycle coherence and phases among UK GDP sectors in the frequency domain. We investigate interactive fluctuations in sectoral output in terms of coherence and phase, focusing on their similarities-dissimilarities and synchronous-asynchronous relations in business cycles. It is further found that longer cycles are dominant cycles, and coherence is the highest in longer cycles and the lowest in medium cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic growth and change in eighteenth-century Britain, both the expansion of pre-industrial commercial society and the industrial revolution itself, have been explored using a variety of approaches. This article highlights a relatively ignored aspect of the problem, arguing that the state, politics, and political economic ideology played a central role. In particular, the early eighteenth-century political victory of a version of political economy associated with the Whig party, which centred on manufacturing and consumption, was a prerequisite for the economic developments later in the century. The article begins by describing a political economy of manufacturing and its rival, a political economy of re-exporting associated with the Tory party. It then explains how and why a political economy of manufacturing became dominant, examining both political elites and ordinary voters and petitioners. The growth of manufacturing and consumption must be understood, therefore, as political as much as economic events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of issue articles on topics including demographic findings of China's 2010 census, the relation between economic development and child malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa, and the relation between educational attainment and cohabitation in Great Britain.

This article explores the composition and geographies of individual wealth holding in England and Wales in the late nineteenth century. It draws on various forms of death duty records to determine the individual ownership of wealth including both personal property and real estate. By combining information on these different kinds of property, it is possible to explore how different strata of wealth holders accumulated specific forms of wealth at the time of their death. The article then examines how the composition of that wealth varied according to the wealth holder's location in the urban hierarchy and distance from London. It points out important geographical differences in both the scale and nature of wealth holding and raises questions about the implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imposition of the world's first modern income tax in 1799 prompted a revival of interest in national accounting. This article examines the extent to which William Pitt the Younger, who proposed the new tax, modelled his estimates of national wealth on those produced a century earlier by the pioneers in this field, Sir William Petty, Charles Davenant, and Gregory King. In addition, the calculations of Benjamin Bell and Henry Beeke, two of Pitt's contemporaries, are analysed in detail to highlight the fragility of these contemporary estimates of national income. This analysis has important implications for economic historians who have used this material to try to establish the structure and growth of national output. National accountants during the long eighteenth century were not, for the most part, concerned with structural change. Rather, their descriptions of economic structure should be understood as reflecting a particular set of a priori claims about what they deemed to be the proper mode and distribution of taxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY One of the major challenges of empirical tax research is the identification and calculation of appropriate tax data. While there is consensus that average marginal tax rates are most suitable for studying the effects of tax policy on economic growth, because of data limitations the calculation of marginal tax rates has been limited to the USA and the UK. This paper provides calculations of average marginal tax rates for the four Scandinavian countries using the methodologies of Seater (1982, 1985) and Barro and Sahasakul (1983, 1986). Then, by pooling the newly calculated tax rates for the Scandinavian countries with the data for the USA and the UK, we investigate the effects of tax policy shocks on the per capita GDP growth rate. Our results suggest that an increase in average marginal tax rates has a negative impact on economic growth. Employing additive mixed panel models with penalized splines as estimation approach, we show that changes in tax rates have nonlinear effects. Increasing average marginal tax rates turn out to be the most distorting at relatively moderate tax rates. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers 'unconventional' monetary stimulus and supply-side reform as ways to speed up UK recovery in the context of fiscal consolidation, drawing on the experience of the 1930s and 1980s. To imitate the 1930s, the inflation-targeting regime may need to be reformed to cut real interest rates, with land-use planning liberalised to 'crowd in' residential investment. To emulate the 1980s, supply-side reforms to improve productivity and to raise permanent income are required and possibilities in the areas of infrastructure, education and taxation are outlined. A problem common to all these options is that they are 'politically challenging'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the contribution of foreign-owned plants and firms to aggregate total factor productivity ( TFP) growth in Britain for 1997-2008 using data from the Annual Respondents' Database. The contribution of different sub-groups is further decomposed to show the role of continuing plants vis-à-vis reallocations in output shares. TFP is calculated using system GMM estimation. Taking into account the smaller initial size of the foreign-owned sector in 1997, foreign-owned plants contributed relatively more to aggregate productivity growth than UK-owned plants over the period. This strong performance is mostly the result of reallocations of output shares towards high productivity continuing plants and the opening of high productivity plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of 18th-century estate acts draws upon the range of manuscript and printed materials relating to 428 estate bills to determine the nature of these measures, the backgrounds and motivations of their sponsors and their impact both upon the properties of individual promoters and on the broader economy. Estate acts enabled small proprietors, gentry and grandees (including a number of women) to free themselves from restrictions imposed by settlements and made it possible for them to sell, lease, exchange, partition, mortgage, alter earlier acts, or make other amendments to existing settlements. Many authorities have stressed the degree to which this legislation promoted economic growth, but the principal finding of this study is that, in the largest number of cases, they were utilised to alleviate indebtedness incurred primarily as a result of personal extravagance and secondarily because of overly generous provision for widows and younger children. While attesting to the positive economic contributions of landowners who tapped mineral resources and promoted urban development, the largest number of bills illuminate the costs of sustaining their self-indulgent and unproductive expenditure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing policy interest in charitable giving in the UK. As part of its Big Society agenda, the current government is keen to encourage a higher level of donations, highlighting new technologies, new social norms and tax incentives as potential mechanisms for raising giving. In the 2012 Budget, however, the Chancellor also proposed limiting tax relief on donations to £50,000, sparking an intense discussion about the effectiveness and desirability of tax incentives for major donors. This paper brings together recent evidence relevant to the ongoing policy debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT There is a lack of evidence on regulatory effectiveness available to support policy makers with the selection of appropriate instruments to deliver better environmental regulation. We identify the types of evidence required to enable regulatory reform, characterize evidence gaps, and explore how these may be filled through future research. A typology of regulatory instruments is presented, and evidence of what has worked when and why is examined, drawing on international experience and recent cases from the United Kingdom (UK). Evidence of the capabilities of good environmental regulators for regulatory effectiveness is lacking, and it is proposed that ethnographic research that captures the nuances of regulatory practice will prove necessary to address this. This paper is of value to policy makers and regulators around the world considering the selection and deployment of the full range of environmental regulatory instruments to respond to environmental risks and in support of economic growth. It can inform the selection of suitable approaches and the design of institutions capable of delivering them. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past decade, much attention has been paid to the migration-development nexus, both in academia and in the global development community. This has created what we argue in this paper can be characterized as an 'international buzz' around the issue. In this paper, we explore how two donor countries, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, have approached the nexus in their policies and practices in recent years. We examine in what ways it has been feasible to work with migration-development links, taking into account various interests and the national political climates regarding development aid and immigration policies. Important themes of the nexus, which are discussed in detail going through the policies, are remittances, engagement with migrant associations, and temporary migration schemes and programmes addressing the so-called 'brain drain' problem. We argue that the two countries represent two different trends among donors: the one does not directly link migration management with migration and development policies, as these are conceived within the national donor agencies; while the other appears to be more focused on providing better migration management through development cooperation. In the conclusion, we argue that the consensus-orientated simplicity of the buzz surrounding migration and development can be said to have had a somewhat restricting effect on the policies, in the sense that it seems to have discouraged conflicting parts of the migration-development nexus from being taken up in the national contexts. Based on our analysis of the two countries' policies, we discuss possible implications for the future, reflecting on the tendency of buzzwords to dip in and out of fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a discursive analysis of the Conservative green paper for international development, published as part of the closely fought election campaign of 2010 that culminated in a UK coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. The article examines the paper in comparison with the discursive shifts represented by the first Department for International Development (DfID) white paper, published by the outgoing Labour administration in 1997. In contrast with the optimistic and globalist developmentalism that characterised Labour's development discourse, the green paper sounds a more cautious note, using empire to focus on Britain's leadership role in poverty alleviation rather than on global progress, and brings back the full force of developmentalism only at the point where it seeks to legitimate spending on security concerns as a development concern. The article then moves on to examine the green paper's most explicit discursive move, the signalling of a 'post-bureaucratic age'. This move towards increased information provision to promote transparency and accountability is likely to signal greater control by powerful donors in securitised times, albeit with a potential re-scaling of responsibility for poverty alleviation to the poorest local communities. Finally, the article looks briefly at information technologies in relation to the transnational spatiality of civil society, arguing that attention needs to be paid to the more embodied forms of transnational association encouraged by the green paper, and to the selection and impacts of information, which need to be seen in the discursive context of wider Conservative constructions of the 'big society'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Urban & Regional Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents a discursive analysis of Great Britain's Conservative Party 2011 Green Paper "One World Conservatism: A Conservative agenda for international development." It offers a comparison of the conception of development in that paper with the 1997 Labour Party White Paper which launched the development of the Department for International Development (DFID). The discourse used to describe Britain's role in promoting global development and reducing poverty is examined.

The Glorious Revolution has been linked with Britain's economic development in the eighteenth century. This article argues that it contributed to the early transport revolution. First, it shows that the regulatory environment became more favourable for undertakers, with their rights being better protected. Second, it shows that investment in improving roads and rivers increased substantially in the mid-1690s shortly after the Glorious Revolution. Regression analysis and structural breaks tests confirm that there was a change in investment even after controlling for other determinants of investment. The results have implications for debates on the role of political change in British economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The paper implements a methodology for assessing the regional impact of investment grants on foreign direct investment (FDI) location, taking data for U.K. regional policy over the period 1985-2005. Using a Generalized Methods of Moments estimator it finds that each £25 million of grant changes the regional location of about six inward FDI projects. On average, projects have 150 jobs and each job diverted costs £27,500 (1995 prices). It also finds that the size of the area designated for grants has a positive location effect. The effect is small in relation to the overall scale of FDI, which may explain the weak grant effect found in recent plant-based location studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the change in individual earnings has occurred at the top. This paper provides new evidence about the earnings distribution in the UK. The evidence is new in that it provides detail about what has happened within the top 10%, covering groups such as the top 1% and the top 0.5%. The aim is to set the recent rise in top earnings in historical perspective, and to make international comparisons. The evidence is new in that it covers the whole of the postwar period, allowing a contrast to be drawn with the 'golden age' of the 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the dynamics relationships between inflation, output growth, and real and nominal uncertainty using the VARFIMA-BEKK MGARCH model of inflation and output growth and quarterly data for the UK covering the 1957:Q2-2006:Q4 period. The analysis is also done for the three sub-periods determined by considering the structural changes such as the Great Moderation in the series of the UK. Two findings are obtained. First, the evidence obtained from the full period supports a number of important conclusions, one of which is mixed evidence regarding the effect of inflation on inflation uncertainty, another one being strong evidence regarding the positive effect of inflation uncertainty on inflation and output growth. Taking this into account, it is possible to put forward that an essential determinant of economic growth is uncertainty about the inflation rate. The last finding for this period is that output growth uncertainty is a positive determinant of the inflation and output growth rate. Second, the evidence found from the sub-periods is that there are no linkages between inflation, output growth and their volatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid rise of England's colonial commerce in the late seventeenth century expanded the nation's resource base, stimulated efficiency improvements across the economy, and was important for long-term growth. However, close examination of the interests at play in England's Atlantic world does not support the Whiggish view that the Glorious Revolution played a benign role in this story. In the decades after the Restoration, the cases of the Royal African Company and the Spanish slave trade in Jamaica are used to show that the competition between Crown and Parliament for control of regulation constrained interest groups on either side in their efforts to capture the profits of empire. Stuart 'tyranny' was not able to damage growth and relatively competitive (and peaceful) conditions underpinned very rapid increases in colonial output and trade. The resolution of the rules of the Atlantic game in 1689 allowed a consolidated state better to manipulate and manage the imperial economy in its own interests. More secure rent-seeking enterprises and expensive wars damaged growth and European rivals began a process of catch-up. The Glorious Revolution was not sufficient to permanently halt economic development but it was sufficient to slow progress towards industrial revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an examination of the patterns and motivations behind parish apprenticeship in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London. It stresses continuity in outlook from parish officials binding children, which involved placements in both the traditional and industrializing sectors of the economy. Evidence on the ages, employment types, and locations of 3,285 pauper apprentices bound from different parts of London between 1767 and 1833 indicates a variety of local patterns. The analysis reveals a pattern of youthful age at binding, a range of employment experiences, and parish-specific links to particular trades and manufactures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The venture capital sector may not be supportive of radical new clean-technology innovation: a potential concern for the UK's vision of achieving a low carbon economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]