Search

In this paper, we explore contemporary regional development in a historic industrial region. Specifically, we unpack the influences of industrial history and culture, built up over several centuries, on contemporary regional development dynamics and issues. In doing so, we draw on an evolutionary perspective within economic geography and perspectives from deindustrialization studies to understand how the past shapes the present. We combine these with theories of agency to understand how key actors comprehend the industrial heritage of a place, and how this is incorporated into contemporary regional development efforts. We explore this combination of conceptual lenses through an in-depth case study of Karlskoga, in Sweden, one of the country's 'bruksorter' (mill towns) that grew up around the production of iron and steel, leading to it eventually becoming one of the largest arms manufacturing cities in Europe, home of the well-known Bofors company. However, all has not been plain sailing, and Karlskoga has experienced the challenges of de-population, industrial restructuring, and shocks to the sector upon which the town is reliant. By analysing these mixed fortunes we develop new insights into how regional development is intertwined with structural, institutional, and cultural industrial legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Marion Newbigin Prize 2024 was awarded to Ben Anderson for his article on 'Boredom and the politics of climate change' in the Scottish Geographical Journal. The selection process involved nominations from the Editorial Board and qualitative assessments from members. Other notable articles included studies on weather futures in Stornoway, historical geography of Scottish lunatic asylums, and the impact of David Harvey on geography and Marxism. The Editorial Team expressed gratitude for the thoughtful engagement of Board members with the journal's content. [Extracted from the article]

In the past decade, China's food retail market has undergone significant restructuring driven by platform firms, enhancing omni‐channel capabilities across the sector, and bolstering the resilience of domestic retailers. These shifts have contributed to the exit of numerous international food retailers. Despite this transformation, there remains a lack of understanding regarding the economic geography of China's food retail market, especially in terms of digital platform operations. This paper aims to conceptualise two major Platform Business Groups (PBGs), Alibaba Group and Tencent‐JD.com Alliance, and investigate their respective roles in the omni‐channel transformation of Chinese food retailing. Drawing on forty semi‐structured interviews and diverse quantitative and qualitative sources, the study conceptualises two distinct PBG models shaping the market: Alibaba's ‘Integrated PBG’ and the Tencent‐JD.com Alliance's ‘Cooperative PBG’. The research explores how the two groups utilise online analytics directly through foodstore subsidiaries and indirectly by providing omni‐channel digital services to third‐party food retailers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green Skills are considered a prerequisite for sustainability transitions. However, existing literature shows heterogenous meanings of Green Skills, which are based on normative assumptions about what is understood as 'green' and 'skill'. Despite the high expectations of Green Skills as a driving force for increasing sustainability of companies and regions, there is a research gap about implementation of Green Skills in vocational education and further training, and their impact on sustainability transitions. This paper is based on a literature review and reveals a fertile field for investigation, creating clarity by systematically analysing the fragmented literature and suggesting a research agenda for economic geography and labour geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dual-path model of industrial evolution and spatial progression has been widely acknowledged and incorporated into the strategic planning to promote the development of urban industries and regional collaborations. However, current research on inter-enterprise city networks mainly focuses on the single sector of flows on all enterprise branches, such as product value chains and production factors, but neglects that of particular industry department. Built upon the new economic geography and city networks theory, this paper develops a methodological framework that focuses on the analysis of city network evolution characteristics of smart industry. Particularly, a conceptual model of smart industry enterprise-industry-city is proposed and then applied to a case study of smart industry in the Yangtze River Delta Region, China. Using enterprise supplier-customer data, a city network of smart industry is constructed and subsequently analyzed with the proposed model. Findings indicate that the smart industry network in Yangtze River Delta Region exhibits a hierarchical structure and the expansion of the network presents a small-world network characteristic. The study not only makes a methodological contribution for revealing the industrial and spatial evolution path of the current smart industry, but also provides empirical support for the formulation of new economic development policies focused on smart industries, demonstrating the role of city clusters as carriers of regional synergistic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is set within the methodological framework of the Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) process, which is an instrument designed to facilitate sustainable and cohesive policy-making choices at the European level. The article is developed within the context of a European H2020-RICE cooperative project, which utilises the STeMA (Sustainable Territorial Economic/Environmental Management Approach) TIA methodology to investigate the potential relationship between statistical economic indicators, specifically Gross Domestic Product, and related parameters (metadata), and Earth Observation (EO) data. The objective is to provide evidence of socioeconomic trends during the Coronavirus 2019 pandemic in the Lazio Region (Italy), with a particular focus on the metropolitan area of the Rome capital city Rome. In line with the pertinent European context and the scientific literature on the subject, the paper examines the potential for combining classical and Earth observation indicators to assess macroeconomic dimensions of development, specifically in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). The results of the analysis indicate the presence of certain correlations between grey data and EO information. The STeMA-TIA approach allows for the measurement and correlation of both qualitative and quantitative statistical indicators with typological functional areas (in accordance with European Commission-EC and Committee of Ministers responsible for Spatial/Regional Planning—CEMAT guidance) at the NUTS (Nomenclature des unités territoriales statistiques) 2 and 3 levels. This facilitates the territorialisation of information, enabling the indirect comparison of data with satellite data and economic trends. A time series of data was gathered and organised for the purpose of facilitating comparison between different periods, beginning with 2019 and extending to the present day. In order to measure and monitor the evolution of the selected territorial economies (the Lazio Region), a synthetic index (or composite indicator) was developed in the economic and epidemic dimensions. This index combines single values of indicators according to a specific STeMA methodology. It is important to note that there are some critical observations to be made about the impact on GDP, due to the discrepancy between the indicators in the two fields of observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Place-based branding strategies are important marketing tools for both regions and firms and take advantage of consumers' embrace of the local in response to globalisation. Craft-brewing is a particularly salient user of these strategies and provides ample data. We use a dataset of breweries, their marketing language and their consumer ratings to study the effectiveness of place-based branding. We use named entity recognition to count references to geography, and measure how these references impact ratings. We find a strong, positive link between the number of place-based labels and a brewery's rating, suggesting consumers are receptive to placed-based branding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an interview with John Allen, a former supervisor at the Open University (OU), who reflects on his time there in the 1980s and 1990s. Allen discusses the interdisciplinary nature of the OU and how its teaching model influenced his intellectual development. He also mentions the challenges faced by the OU, including accusations of Marxist bias. Allen emphasizes the collaborative nature of the OU's course teams and the importance of translating complex ideas for students. The text also discusses the role of supervision in guiding postgraduate students and the impact of different theoretical perspectives. Overall, the article highlights the importance of open dialogue and intellectual exchange in academic settings. [Extracted from the article]

This article is an interview with Paul du Gay and Michael Pryke, two academics who played a significant role in the development of cultural economy as a field of study. They discuss their experiences at the Open University in the 1990s and the events that led to the first and second cultural economy workshops. The interview provides insights into the research culture at the Open University during that time, highlighting the close relationships between postgraduates and central academics, as well as the interdisciplinary nature of the faculty. The interview also mentions the influence of Stuart Hall, who headed the Sociology department at the Open University and had a significant impact on the development of cultural economy. The authors reflect on their own contributions to the field and the influence of other scholars, such as Richard Sennett and Michel Callon. They also discuss the challenges they faced in bringing together different disciplines and perspectives to study finance and money from a cultural lens. Overall, the cultural economy field has made a valuable contribution to understanding the relationships between finance, culture, and everyday life. [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores how Ontario's craft brewers created new as well as disrupted and changed existing institutions at local and regional levels in the province's beer industry. Using a relational economic geography framework and a markets-as-practices perspective, this study highlights the brewer's collaborative and pro-social practices, showing how close inter-firm relations and engagement with local communities resulted in resource mobilization such as better access to financial capital and greater social capital, which mobilized public support for the industry, and ultimately which helped individual and collective institutional work efforts succeed. The findings are significant as they show how actors in the industry overcame the constraints imposed on them in an oligopolistic market dominated by multinational firms. It also posits craft brewers acted individually at a local scale as institutional entrepreneurs, revisiting criticisms around this concept. This research contributes to understanding how localized market actors can achieve broader institutional change and offers insights into the relationship between market practices and institutional work, including entrepreneurship in craft industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potentially limiting nature of central bank mandates, together with non-existent standards to assess the impact of climate risks used to inhibit the incorporation of climate change considerations in central bank decisions. This paper analyses how, despite these challenges, climate change risk analysis spread among central banks by examining 941 European financial stability reports of 38 central banks in Europe and their source references. We show that the Dutch and Belgian central banks pioneered significant engagement with climate change risk in financial stability reports, followed by central banks in other Eurozone countries. Then the ECB stepped in, aggregated novel research methods into an accepted analytical framework, and moved to the centre of the stage of the process. Our analysis indicates that various types of proximity played a significant role in the spread of climate friendly central bank mandate interpretations and analytical techniques, but the engagement of a central player was crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'spatial fix' has been central to economic geography for nearly 50 years, examining capitalist development through both stability and change. Harvey's original conceptions of the fix prioritised capital's capacity to fix space to accumulate and forestall crisis. We continue this by considering the ' socio -spatial fix', allowing closer investigation of who makes the landscapes of capitalism, and how actor choices and actor inter- and intra-relationships forestall crises of accumulation. We show how crisis, time and actors are central to making and re-making socio-spatial fixes and in turn to understanding both the socio-spatial dialectic and the spatial fix. Empirically, we compare two remote but globally networked mining towns, Kiruna, Sweden and Newman, Australia. Mining towns are rewarding case-studies because capital's relative immobility and the dominance of a single industry make strikingly clear how both production and social reproduction are remade. We enrich general theorisations in three ways, by explaining: first, how crisis-threatening events require renegotiation of socio-spatial arrangements; second, how time and timing are critical in remaking fixes; third, how actor agency and heterogeneity are central because the actors who make fixes change over time and are in complex relationships with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social impact investors claim to promote sustainable development by mobilizing private finance capital to solve pressing global challenges like poverty alleviation. In this paper, I interrogate this claim through an examination of microfinance in Cambodia, a major destination for impact investment. In the past decade, Cambodia has received nearly 10% of global investments from microfinance-specific funds. It now has the largest microfinance-debt per capita ratio of any country in the world. Based on qualitative research between 2021 and 2023, I argue that impact investment functions as an anti-politics of development that reinforces finance as a political technology of neoliberal governance. Over the past two decades, impact investors have poured capital into the country's microfinance industry to expand access to credit without acknowledging structural political-economic conditions that have produced rising over-indebtedness among microfinance borrowers. Instead, they have argued that the problems created by the microfinance industry are best resolved through a self-regulation model that uses a voluntary code of conduct based on global standards of responsible finance. Thus, impact investors have been integral in broader transformations that have extended financial logics, technologies and accumulation imperatives into people's daily lives. This paper contributes to economic geography and critical development studies by explaining how impact investment deepens neoliberal financialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geography has obvious theoretical advantages in explaining the globalization of enterprises' R&D. Based on the theory of international direct investment and the relevant theories of economic geography, this paper constructs an analytical framework for the globalization of Chinese enterprises' R&D from the two dimensions of location and relationship, and takes Huawei as an example to analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics of enterprise R&D globalization and the interaction mechanism between R&D globalization and enterprise innovation capability upgrading, so as to confirm the applicability of the interpretation framework. The study believes that the independent innovation ability and technology absorption ability accumulated by enterprises in related fields are the prerequisites for their R&D globalization. On this basis, choosing a suitable location to continue to deploy overseas R&D centers, making full use of the technical advantages and rich innovation resources of the host country, and relying on good inter-state relations and the cooperation network relationship between Chinese enterprises and host country enterprises, universities and research institutes are important strategic choices for enterprises to obtain innovation resources and knowledge spillover to achieve technological upgrading. However, in the context of increasingly fierce global science and technology competition and the prevalence of trade protectionism, the changes in inter-state relations have had a great impact on the R&D globalization of Chinese enterprises, and should also be regarded as an important factor for Chinese enterprises to consider overseas R&D investment. Finally, drawing on Huawei's R&D globalization development experience, suggestions are made for Chinese enterprises to choose appropriate locations to effectively implement overseas R&D investment to enhance their innovation capabilities. At the same time, it also provides theoretical and case support for relevant departments to formulate policies and measures to encourage Chinese enterprises to go global [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article identifies the recurring expression 'scope and method/s' in three published lectures by Henry Sidgwick, Halford Mackinder and James George Frazer between 1885 and 1921. It tracks transdisciplinary connections between the thought and practice of late nineteenth-century philosophy, economic science and geography, and early twentieth-century anthropology, thereby illuminating shifting perceptions, and applications, of historical geographical knowledge and imaginations in a broader speculative evolutionary epistemological scheme. At a time when science and humanities subjects were thought to be diverging, it shows that metaphorical uses of optical instruments helped draw synoptic spatio-temporal frames of reference which shaped transdisciplinary and trans -institutional practices. • Speculates about the metaphorical uses of optical instruments in satiotemoral frames of reference. • Presents a projected line of sight between Henry Sidgwick, Halford Mackinder and James George Frazer. • Suggests historical geographical conceptual frameworks were important to philosophy and political economy and anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social and spatial mobility have been subject to substantial recent sociological and policy debate. Complementing other recent work, in this paper we explore these patterns in relation to higher education. Making use of high‐quality data from the higher education statistics agency (HESA), we ran a set of multilevel models to test whether the local authority areas where young people grow up influence social and spatial mobility into a higher professional or managerial job on graduation. We found entry to these patterns reflect pre‐existing geographies of wealth and income, with more affluent rural and suburban areas in South‐East England having higher levels of entry to these occupations. Graduates clustered from major cities tended to be spatially immobile and those from peripheral areas further away from these cities show a higher density of long‐distance moves following graduation. We also explored the intersection between social and spatial mobility for graduates with the economic geography of Britain, showing that access to high‐class occupations is not necessarily associated with long‐distance moves across most British districts. Our evidence further suggests that the 'London effect', where working‐class students have higher school attainment than their peers elsewhere, may not continue through to graduate employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing interest in exploring contemporary financialisation in terms of the geographies of debt. Many economic geographers have adopted a financial ecologies approach to explain these geographies. While this approach provides analytical benefits, it nonetheless analyses debt almost exclusively in terms of consumer finance, thereby overlooking the relations of production in which many indebted households engage. To address this issue, I develop the agrarian financial ecologies concept, which both directs analysis towards the diversity of credit–debt relations in rural economies, and highlights the relationship between land, labour and debt in the process of agricultural production. I apply this concept to study farm household debt in Cambodia, where indebtedness has become a widespread problem among farmers facing rapid economic transformation in the countryside. By focusing on land and labour, I demonstrate how diverse credit–debt relations within Cambodia's agrarian financial ecology have produced uneven socio‐spatial outcomes, namely debt‐driven land dispossession. This paper advances geographic theory about the dynamics of value production, circulation and appropriation within geographies of debt. It also extends the empirical remit of existing financial ecologies scholarship by attending to the credit–debt relations that characterise many agrarian livelihoods today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose –Tourism development can provide a sustainable path through which to diversify the economy. The aim of this research is 1) to assess the current economic diversification of a potential tourism region in an emerging economy, that of the Ulytau region of Kazakhstan; 2) to detail the impediments to economic diversification through tourism development, and 3) to recommend ways to foster economic diversification. Methodology/Design/Approach – The research uses secondary data to assess the current situation of the region and in-depth interviews with tourism and economic development experts to understand the current obstacles to economic diversification. Findings – This rural region of Kazakhstan is relatively concentrated in terms of its economic diversification and investment in infrastructure such roads, airports, and telecommunication as well as marking and promotion of the natural and cultural attractions will be a path to diversify the economy through tourism development. Originality of the research – This research uses evolutionary economic geography as a useful framework through which to view how destinations change over time. The research provides a model through which other destinations, dominated by non-renewable resource extraction can pivot towards tourism as a way to diversify the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intense competition amongst travel apps, regardless of their popularity, has made repurchase intention a critical financial challenge for travel providers. By combining the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework and the New Economic Geography (NEG) theory, this research examined how city tier disparities influence the experiential features of travel apps and user repurchase intentions. Survey data was acquired from 739 travel app users in China. The findings indicate that a set of context-based experiential features significantly influences utilitarian and hedonic values, and consequently leading to a notable increase in repurchase intentions. In addition, the outcomes of a multigroup analysis revealed that China's users located in tier 1 city (i.e. Beijing) and tier 3 city (i.e. Kunming) had distinct effects on the hypothesised relationships. Theoretically, the research provides extensive implications to information systems and tourism literatures; whilst offering some actionable insights to travel practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital platforms, such as Google, Amazon, or Instagram, provide a promising spatial fix to urban-economic problems by leveraging technology and data while connecting stakeholders and overcoming spatial barriers to make urban life, consumption, sales, and production more efficient. This article contributes to the debate on digital platforms in economic geography by advancing the emerging lens of the platform fix, adopting a critical standpoint concerning the solutionist viewpoint that presents platforms as a fix for various challenges. The article develops its perspective against the background of 57 semi-structured interviews, 200 conducted standardized questionnaires, and long-term on/offline observations. We aim to provide a platform fix perspective revealing how digital platforms redefine spatial interactions, addressing economic challenges through spatial fixes while becoming established as indispensable infrastructures; however, platform fixes often fail to address underlying issues, leading to platform dependencies and the instrumentalization of actors. Therefore, we suggest a cautious application of urban platforms as solutions and critically evaluate the formation of public–private platform partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Investigaciones Regionales is the property of Asociacion Espanola de Ciencia Regional 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 topic of regional resilience has gained notoriety in regional economics and economic geography in recent years. The main aim is to understand why regions react differently to adverse shocks. To this end, several empirical studies have analyzed the impacts economic crises have had on the performance of regional economies and found considerably asymmetric results. Similarly, this study analyzes the duration of the 2008 crisis in Brazilian regions and aims to identify the characteristics that allowed some regions to rapidly recover from the crisis. However, the main novelty of this study lies in the fact that to do so, statistical tools from survival analysis were used. The findings suggest that having more educated workers and being located within metropolitan regions are two characteristics that contribute to faster recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates how exchange governance and the local market system influence a firm's adaptability to an economic crisis. This paper unveils a nuanced performance disparity by leveraging a rich dataset of manufacturing firms in Spain. While vertically integrated firms exhibit superior performance during periods of stability, they confront more significant setbacks in the aftermath of economic crises. This study demonstrates that the extent of this performance divergence is contingent upon the thickness of the local market system, supporting the hypothesis that vertically integrated firms derive reduced adaptive benefits from agglomeration economies. These findings shed light on the dynamic interrelationship between a firm's vertical scope and geographical context. They underscore the significance of a holistic assessment when determining the optimal approach to exchange governance. This assessment must evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of autonomous versus coordinated adaptation across economic cycles and geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractStudies of industrial path development, a literature strongly influenced by evolutionary economic geography and systems of innovation theorizing, have an analytical focus on how interplays between actors, networks, and institutions, what we term social contingencies, shape industrial development in geographic areas. Tying into earlier calls in the literature, we argue that the emphasis on social contingencies has led to limited analytical attention to how material contingencies are also influential in shaping how and where industries develop. Based on this, we develop an analytical framework for studying sociomaterial contingencies for industrial path development in geographic contexts. Consequently, and echoing early path development theory, we argue for considering the breadth of dimensions underpinning industrial path development and their interplay, considering both intangible and tangible explanators without reducing either of these categories on behalf of the other. We discuss our approach in an exemplifying discussion of potential industrialization of hydrogen production in Western Norway to illustrate how assessment of sociomaterial contingencies adds analytical utility to the industrial path development literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informed by economic geography's history and by contemporary feminist thought, this exchanges commentary proposes the strategic reclamation of outrage to inform the construction and purpose of explanation in the subfield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financialised capitalism's proclivity for assets helps explain growing investment into new housing asset-classes, including co-living, Build-to-Rent and Purpose-Built Student Housing. To date, research has focused on institutional and financial settings driving the assetisation of property. Less common is research into the microgeographies of assetisation. In this paper, we contribute to research on the microgeographies of assetisation by examining how households and their inhabitants are actively reworked within co-living housing. Our analysis identifies how households are rendered more investable and profitable, demonstrating how assetisation processes can exceed the bounds of real estate property as an arena of value. Assetisation is intimately navigated in microgeographic sites, with implications for residents' housing security and domestic experiences. Our analysis draws on research conducted between 2016 and 2022 that charted the emergence, maturation and transformation of the co-living sector in New York City, San Francisco and Australia. The paper identifies the three key practices through which co-living providers realise value from households and residents: (1) Running an asset-light business model, allowing profit from property outside the risks of ownership. (2) Rescripting residents as subscribed members rather than legal tenants. (3) Curating household forms, delivering experiences through hospitality-like services and capitalising on the residents as community members to generate maximum profit. This work supports economic and housing geographers to go beyond conceptualisations of financialisation as a 'monolithic and inevitable process', shining a light on microgeographic sites, actors and practices holding up wider financial ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, U.S. private insurers abandoned flood coverage after deeming it incalculable, precipitating the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) in 1968. The NFIP continued to underwrite illegible risk in the public interest. For decades, hydraulic models were limited to simplified "one-dimensional" simulations ill-equipped to characterize uncertainty to the standard of market carriers. However, recent advancements in multidimensional characterization have galvanized the flood sector. The NFIP has licensed some of the most expansive 2-D models to date from eager tech firms; it has pledged to modernize its risk portfolio, invest in financing, and attract private carriers in order to "lift all boats" within the flood sector. This article intervenes by examining the "multidimensional turn" as a fix for "crises of calculation." The article rejects teleological narratives crediting models for "changing how we think" about flood, and illustrates how underwriters enframe illegible floodplains as unruly problems. The incalculability of flood risk is an "insurantial logic" naturalized as a physical truth. Economic geographers have interrogated the materiality of such truths as integral to the production of nature under capitalism. The article examines how invested state and non-state actors operationalize impediments to legible risk to realize their financial interests. It further argues that FEMA's costly efforts to realize an allusive market are undermined by intractable conflicts between pure-market and affordable coverage. The NFIP will likely continue to do the heavy lifting with respect to underwriting, and selective geographies of private coverage will mirror the drive for surplus value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the spirit of this exchange's call for more "methodological talk" in explanation, I suggest that polyphonic disunity that has prompted persistent calls in economic geography for some form of unificatory explanation may be pursued through opportunities in counterfactual and consilience explanations. These opportunities acknowledge a unificatory continuum that does not eschew explanatory autonomy while drawing multivoices and their methodologies into proximity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Jamie Peck's remit for this initial set of Exchanges section contributions to present forward-positive approaches to economic geography, I offer American philosophical pragmatism, and more specifically, the neo-pragmatism of the American philosopher, Richard Rorty (1931–2007). Rather than providing a complete architectonic philosophy, pragmatism presents a set of ideas about ideas. Within the context of economic geography, I explore within this short paper three neo-pragmatist ideas: a reconceptualization of knowledge and truth; experimentation and creativity; and pluralism and conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this piece, I make the case for deeper engagement with law and legal methodologies in economic geography. Recent work in and beyond geography has demonstrated that law is constitutive of capitalism. Yet, despite excellent research on many particular spatio-legal topics, there have been few attempts to conceptualize a legal approach to economic geography in any sustained way. Here, I suggest that incorporating law and legal methodologies into existing economic geographic analyses can deepen our explanations of spatio-temporal economic variegation, opening up new research questions and methods for economic geographers and expanding our conceptions of economic governance, agency, and knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do economic geographers determine where to begin their research projects, where to locate and delimit their case studies, where and how to "cut in" to problems? In the absence of self-evident or pregiven answers to these questions, the problem-cum-choice of where and how to start is inescapably tangled up with issues of preliminary conceptualization and indeed theorization, since cases are not so much found as made, being in various ways coproduced with different "theory-method packages." There is (and can be) no singular or universal answer to these questions. Instead, this brief intervention outlines one rationale for getting "started," founded as such rationales should be with reference a particular approach or mode of theorization. The approach here centers on the problematic of recombinant development, on the role of extended case-study designs, and on the still sparsely realized potential of conjunctural modes of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This intervention elaborates on why causal explanation can serve as an indispensable building block towards robust theory development in economic geography. It argues for the critical importance of causal explanation in the subfield's intellectual development and to its wider appeal to the social sciences. First, I show how this vital importance is premised on explanations that uncover the causal mechanisms of economic events, practices and processes that make things happen in society and space. Put differently, explanation needs causal connections as its necessary condition of explanatory power and practical adequacy. Its empirical operation is grounded in contextual contingencies and place-based specificities in an economic-geographical world characterized by complexity, multiplicity and emergence. Second, I explain why causal explanation represents a necessary step towards pragmatic research in economic geography. Our socio-spatial interventions can be better developed if we have a clearer sense of why and how carefully theorized causal mechanisms interact with contingent contexts to produce specific events and outcomes in the space-economy. Framed in this double hermeneutic sense of being both vital and pragmatic, causal explanation is critical in/to economic geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Exchanges piece, I comment on centripetal and centrifugal tendencies across social science disciplines with an eye to the possibilities and pitfalls of analytical eclecticism in bridging within-field impasse and generating cross-disciplinary dialogue germane to economic geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on over two years of ethnographic research in the US–Mexico borderlands, this article examines how regional economic development actors work to position the border region as a competitive node in the global economy. In the context of the economic uncertainty generated by recent political and economic restructuring, like the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, actors deploy discourses of regionalism and practices of regional integration as part of an economic development strategy designed to foment both economic recovery and competitiveness. I argue that central to their efforts to promote a modern, seamlessly integrated binational border region to interested investors and employers is the maquiladora model of economic development. This is an economic development model built on (1) the long-term devaluation of industrial labor and (2) the active maintenance of the geopolitical border itself, as an institution reproductive of the racialized (and relational) hierarchies of value that underwrite the border region's competitiveness. Engaging insights on capitalism's uneven development from feminist economic geography and contributions from border studies, I suggest that an empirical engagement with the US–Mexico borderlands expands our geographic imagination of where, and how, racialized devaluation happens. Ultimately, taking regional actors and their economic development strategies and imaginaries seriously illuminates their ongoing importance in shaping regional economic trajectories, and therefore the well-being of border communities, now, and in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To increase the understanding of how the external environment impact the local industrial development, this study builds a conceptual framework of industrial evolutionary development by integrating evolutionary and developmental theories from the perspective of evolutionary economic geography. This study emphasised the combination of two mechanisms. The first evolutionary mechanism consisting of variation, selection and retention, and the diversity within and between enterprise clusters serves as the starting point for evolution. The external environment selects and retains the most competitive enterprises under the mechanism of selection. The second developmental mechanism is the influence of the external environment on enterprises. The external environment screens and affects the development of firms at and across multiple levels, same level and across levels. Based on the case studies of the e‐sports industry in China, this study finds that technological development has driven the transformation of the e‐sports industry. Additionally, location cost, spatial proximity, local policy, urban strategy and national planning have been identified as crucial factors that influence the location choice of the e‐sports industry. This study highlights the importance of paying more attention to environmental dynamics in the research and practice of industrial evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate population agglomeration in a long narrow economy, in which an odd number of places are evenly distributed over a line segment. The bifurcation analysis of this economy elucidates the mechanism of the emergence of twin cities around the central city. The validity and usefulness of this analysis are confirmed using several well-known economic geography models that display various kinds of bifurcation behaviors. By this analysis, we investigate the historical change in the population distribution in a chain of cities on Japan's Main Island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding individual's socioeconomic status (SES) can provide supporting information for designing political and economic policies. Acquiring large‐scale economic survey data is time‐consuming and laborious. The widespread mobile phone data, which can reflect human mobility and social network characteristics, has become a low‐cost data source for researchers to infer SES. However, previous studies often oversimplify human mobility features and social network features extracted from mobile phone data into general statistical features, resulting in discounting some important temporal and relational information. Therefore, we propose a comprehensive framework for individual SES prediction that effectively utilizes a combination of human mobility and social relationships. In this framework, Word2Vec module extracts human mobility features from mobile phone positioning data, and graph neural network (GNN) module GraphSAGE captures social network characteristics constructed from call detail records. We evaluated the effectiveness of our proposed approach by training the model with real‐world data in Beijing. According to the experimental results, our proposed hybrid approach outperformed the other methods evidently, demonstrating that human mobility and social links are complementary in the characterization of SES. Coupling human mobility and social links can further deepen our understanding of cities' economic geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept and influence of untraded inter‐dependencies are under‐explored in the industrial cluster and informal economy literature. In this paper, we attempt to bridge this gap by extending the conventional Cobb‐Douglas production function to operationalising and testing the moderating effects of two forms of untraded inter‐dependencies in informal production. Based on the diffusion theory, we argue that knowledge‐sharing would favour informal production, as opposed to tool‐sharing. Using quantitative methods, 334 informal artisans were randomly sampled from three clusters in the Kumasi Metropolis of Ghana and analysed data obtained with moderating models and simple slopes plots. The tested models and fuzzy set configurations confirmed that knowledge‐sharing, but not tool‐sharing, has significant interaction effects on informal production. The optimal model derived would be one in which capital interacts with incremental knowledge‐sharing at the existing level of tool‐sharing among the artisans. This paper serves as an extension of new economic geography with an additional factor of untraded inter‐dependencies. As part of post‐COVID restoration and enhancement of informal production processes, we recommend city officials to deliberately plan and space clustered enterprises that enable the observed rates of interactions between production factors and untraded inter‐dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial distribution of talent is crucial in shaping the spatial patterns of industries. ‘Industries following talent’ has emerged as a new trend. However, a unified analytical framework for the causal logic between industrial and talent agglomeration is still lacking, and the micro-level mechanisms of their interaction remain theoretically unexplored. This paper extends the footloose entrepreneur (FE) model in new economic geography by relaxing the strong assumption of simultaneous mobility of talent and firms. It incorporates the driving mechanism of local quality in new spatial economics and the heterogeneity of talent. By establishing a general spatial equilibrium analytical framework, this paper explores the interactions of heterogeneous talent agglomeration and its micro-level mechanisms affecting industrial agglomeration. The conclusions are as follows: low-skilled talent is more likely to generate agglomeration incentives than high-skilled talent and serves as a precursor for initiating and sustaining the agglomeration of manufacturing industries; when trade costs are high, the agglomeration of low-skilled talent exerts a crowding-out effect on high-skilled talent and weakens the industrial agglomeration pattern; conversely, when trade costs are low, low-skilled talent exerts an inducement effect on high-skilled talent and strengthens the industrial agglomeration pattern; due to the differing agglomeration thresholds faced by heterogeneous talent and their interdependent distribution, the economy does not necessarily form symmetric equilibria and core-periphery structures; instead, it may result in interior equilibria characterized by the agglomeration of low-skilled talent and the dispersion of high-skilled talent, and the scattered distribution of industries; the heterogeneity in the type distribution of talent acts as a dispersive force on regional industrial patterns, while the efficiency heterogeneity of talent acts as an agglomerative force. It is recommended that local governments prioritize talent first, attract industries through talent, and formulate strategies for talent introduction tailored to local conditions. Additionally, they should focus on promoting trade integration to reduce trade costs for enterprises. Furthermore, the government should enhance and improve human capital growth channels for lower-tier talent and ordinary workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial policy, as one of the most potent weapons employed by governments, is recommended to adhere to the principles of high relatedness and high economic complexity, which can minimize risks and maximize returns. However, this approach may not be optimal in developing countries with poor industrial bases, limited innovative capabilities and weak institutional frameworks. Based on relatedness and economic complexity, this study illustrates the evolution paths of industrial policy in China and identifies underlying influencing factors deciding the patterns of policymaking. Different from developed countries, it takes several steps for developing countries to reach the final target, the smart specialization approach, instead of one‐step jumping. Moreover, industrial policy is not always the panacea, and the effects of industrial policy vary depending on local contexts. In sum, this study extends research towards the complex co‐evolution process of policy and industries in developing countries and provides more insights for policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital platforms are expanding globally with significant implications for how economies operate. We argue that the literature has tended to over-emphasize the globalized and homogeneous impacts of platforms with less analysis of variable patterns across space. To conceptualize variety, the notion of variegated capitalism is examined to provide insights into the nature of platform capitalism. Conceptual discussion is supported by the case of digital marketplace platforms in Thailand. The case highlights how macro-regional relations, national capitalist systems, state strategy and sectoral norms orientate how platforms operate. Examining these variations through the lens of capitalism as an inherently uneven and unfolding process highlights its potential for identifying key contradictions and fixes in platform capitalism, and future directions for regulation and appropriation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across advanced industrialized democracies, the political centre is collapsing as politicians on the far right and far left enjoy increasing electoral success. Recent research links import shocks to voter support for far-right parties. However, we know comparatively less about how these shocks impact individual legislator ideology, especially that of mainstream politicians. Do import shocks drive economic or cultural ideological shifts among mainstream legislators? If so, to what extent do local competitive contexts shape these shifts? Using a dataset of French Senate roll call votes, we find that localized increases in import exposure moves elite ideology to the left economically; this is magnified in departments with majoritarian electoral systems. We show that legislators shift their cultural positions in response to import shocks, but only when faced with extremist political competitors focused on cultural issues. Our results suggest the value of attending to how political and economic geography intersect to shape elite policy positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic, financial, and spatial analytical models are known to be integral parts of large territorial works and plans. Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) and, newly, Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) and Do Not Significant Harms principle (DNSH) are required to support the decision-making and evaluation process underlying climate change, initial strategic investment confirmation and final reporting. Looking at them from an economic-geographical perspective and drawing inspiration from ongoing experiences in Europe and Italy, methodological and operational guidelines are suggested in the paper to address this issue, so that both the environmental and social costs are reflected in the costs/prices/returns and in the mitigation of the public works impacts, creating a strong link between economy, territory, and environment, so that externalities can become internalities. The underlying thesis is that, knowing the territorial impacts generated by the TIA and the sustainable consistency of the project with the DNSH taxonomy, it is possible to adopt compensatory and mitigation actions, including in the related CBAs; and, at the same time, to minimise the costs resulting from the lack of policy coordination in territorial action between regional and local plans, both horizontal and vertical, when large infrastructure projects come from top-down decision as in the case of Recovery and Resilience Facility plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Turkic Studies Journal is the property of L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University 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.)

We show that score inflation yields residential sorting around what households expect to be better schools, with long-term consequences for the economic geography of neighborhoods. We consider primary school exams in England, where grading standards have triggered an inflation of indicators in the national performance tables since the mid-1990s. Local neighborhoods were gentrified because of school improvements artificially signaled by score inflation. Competition between schools increased, yielding a real improvement in their quality. Effects of score inflation on house prices, deprivation, and local economic activities are identifiable through to the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cohesion Policy is one of the core policy areas of the European Union and one of the largest expenditure items in its budget. Its impact is the subject of intense academic and policy debate, but its effectiveness is an empirical question still open. This article contributes to this debate by performing a region-specific investigation of the direct and indirect impact of Structural Funds expenditure. We employ a heterogeneous panel data model, which accommodates the spatial dependence in a heterogeneous setting and measures heterogeneous spatial spillover effects, both inward and outward. We also consider different channels of spatial spillovers with respect to standard geographical closeness. In particular, the introduction of new measures of proximity that explicitly consider economic linkages between regions is a novel contribution to the literature. The results clearly indicate that the impact of the Cohesion Policy, while positive overall, is highly heterogeneous and the Structural Funds expenditure generates substantial heterogeneous spatial spillovers: the positive effects do not remain confined to the target regions. Finally, strong spillover effects are channelled by value-added trade connections, particularly in regions belonging to the so-called 'Central European Manufacturing Core'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine how symbolic knowledge innovation—that is, the recombination of ideas on aesthetic value in new ways—emerges in the periphery. While symbolic knowledge innovation drives growth, its role in creating new paths in the periphery is largely under-investigated. New path creation has been largely envisaged through macro (e.g. policy) or meso (e.g. industrial R&D) aggregates, overlooking micro-level actors (e.g. individuals), and their agency in mobilizing heterogeneous resources vital for innovation. Viewed in this light, we investigate how the interaction of actors at different levels (macro, meso, and micro) shapes symbolic knowledge innovation in the periphery. We draw on the case of Bauhaus movement to investigate symbolic knowledge innovation in the peripheries of Weimar and Dessau. Our findings illustrate symbolic knowledge innovation at the Bauhaus in terms of three phases, namely, semiotic codes: Bauhaus idea generation and articulation; material basis: development of Bauhaus artefacts; and material basis: Bauhaus commercial success. We further unpack actors' agency and show how each phase of symbolic knowledge innovation emerges through bricolage. We contribute to the economic geography literature by showing the role of bricolage and actors' agency in symbolic knowledge innovation for new path creation in the periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of infrastructure as a regional development tool in resource peripheries has received little direct inquiry in both policy and scholarly debates. This article synthesizes theoretical and empirical directions across economic geography, regional studies and critical infrastructure studies to form a research agenda for investigating the role of built infrastructure in the development of 'left behind' peripheral regions in the USA. We argue that infrastructural systems' material, social, fiscal and political dimensions potentially deepen rather than mitigate structural 'left behind-ness'. Future research and policy design must account for such dynamics if infrastructure interventions are to prove generative for regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]